


Perfect Forms

by StormysHealthyCopingMechanisms



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Aliens, Gangsey, I hope, I just... slept for a bit, I never stop, Language, M/M, Might Get Gory, Xenomorphs, also Kavinsky is in this a lot, as in Alien, attempted self-sacrifice, bad language, but it gets good, but later, hahaha you thought I had stopped, in spaaaaaace, precious innocent babies stop right there, problem is, relationships exist - Freeform, weak sci fi, you were warned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-08-30
Packaged: 2019-05-20 14:42:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 47,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14896488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormysHealthyCopingMechanisms/pseuds/StormysHealthyCopingMechanisms
Summary: It's the Gangsey against the Xenomorph. Does it make sense? No. Does it matter? Meh. Is this likely to be another story that gets ridiculously out of hand because I really like Alien? 100%.Excessively self-indulgent time with spaaaaaaaace.





	1. The Edge of the Universe

First there was tapping.

Ronan was on a beach. The stones under his palms impressed patterns into his skin. They were sharper than pebbles, harder than sand. Gemstones, to be precise.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The water doesn’t reach his feet. It’s metallic indigo in places, elsewhere a technicolor ultramarine. He stares across the water for a bit, at the swirling eddies just barely skating up the rocks towards him.

Thud. Thud.

‘Lynch!’

 _Adam_. He’s standing a couple of feet away, boots on glittering jewels, the water gently lapping at him, attempting to draw him into the sea. It gets dark a few steps from the shore, so dark it’s impossible to see the bottom, to see your own feet. It’s a mistake to trust the serenity of the dark, gentle waves.

Ronan turns his attention from the water. He scoops a handful of uncut crystals and lets them spill through his fingers, a hypnotic cascade of edges and light.

Adam is looking upwards, at the twin moons, one glowing silver and familiar, silhouetted against the second, immense, burnished red. It occupies at least a third of the horizon, at this time of day, which Ronan estimates to be around noon. A massive curve in the sky, so crisp it looks close enough to touch.

The sun is distant here. It’s dark on the shore, and the light is largely reflected from the intermediary moon.

Adam would sit beside him, soon enough, but he wouldn’t turn away from the sky. He never did.

 

The final, cataclysmic _bang_ dragged Ronan upright in bed, and he swayed dizzily for a few moments. Dreaming. Shit. Dreaming of _that_ , again.

‘Lynch!’ The voice was muffled. Something against the wall next to the door unbalanced, and it clattered to the floor. Ronan glared into the darkness.

He answered ’What the fuck do you want?’ in a rough snarl.

‘Are you getting up?’

Ronan didn’t respond, but he threw aside the blanket and moodily hauled himself off the mattress.

The room was warm, but dark, and he still had the vivid recollection of the beach at the forefront of his thoughts. He didn’t know what time it was, or why he was being rudely awakened from his slumber. Two hundred credits said he would have been better off staying in the dream.

He dragged on a pair of jeans and slapped the door console.

‘What. The fuck.’ He jabbed an accusing finger in Parrish’s direction as the door slid open. ‘D’you want?’

His crewmate looked back, unperturbed. ‘I’m going for supplies.’ He explained. ‘You said you wanted in on the supply run.’

‘I know what I said.’ Ronan retorted irritably. He did… remember… now. Unfortunately.

With effort, Parrish seemed to withhold his exasperation. ‘It’s 2pm.’

‘Time is a construct.’ Ronan turned back into his room, hunting ineffectively for a shirt amongst the debris. Parrish followed him through the open doorway and settled onto the end of Ronan’s bed, watching him with lowered eyelids.

Ronan remembered a time when, for weeks, Parrish wouldn’t enter another person’s room. He could barely be convinced to remain in his own. Alas, the time of Parrish’s discomfort was long gone, and now Ronan suffered for it.

He pulled on a shirt, and when Adam failed to move, began searching for a jacket.

Parrish was wearing his usual station-gear - exactly the same clothing he wore on the ship. The navy coveralls he’d brought with him when he joined the crew, and had, inconceivably, worn at every opportunity since.

They’d been new at the time. Standard issue for trained engineers.

Now they were more like glorified rags.

He wasn’t even an engineer. Not technically.

It didn’t stop him from fucking around in Engineering. With Henry. Or, for the sake of Ronan’s sanity… _near_ Henry.

Parrish stood up, and Ronan followed him out of the room, thumping the external panel once to close the door. Adam grimaced; ‘You break those things at least twice a week.’

Ronan gave him the middle finger.

 

 

‘What are you after, anyway?’ Parrish asked eventually.

They’d made it through the security checkpoint into Terminus relatively unscathed, although Ronan had considered practising a few more obscene gestures on the officials stationed there. Parrish was headed for the nearest elevator to W deck, where he could find the neatly organised arrays of lab equipment and spare parts and chemicals.

‘You’ve always gotta assume I’m after something?’ Ronan snapped, eyeing a passing hover bike.

‘No.’ Parrish answered bluntly. ‘But I have to assume you haven’t experienced some kind of fundamental alteration to your identity that would underlie an otherwise inexplicable choice to come and collect supplies _just_ _for_ _fun_.’

Ronan smirked. ‘At least you’re aware you’re incapable of fun.’

Adam didn’t even have the good grace to look offended. He merely nodded. ‘Yeah. Rationality, practicality, productivity, and functionality… qualities no doubt unfamiliar to you. But not fun.’ He shrugged in mock regret.

‘Remind me-’

‘I’m not a synth.’

Ronan snorted. ‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m not a synth.’ Parrish’s gaze travelled across the faces of some passing individuals - little more than kids - before he drew his attention back carefully. They looked absurdly young, for graduates visiting Terminus… but then, Parrish hadn’t aged much in thirty years. Ronan hadn’t aged much in fifty.

Robot jokes were old hat with Adam. He didn’t seem to mind them, and Ronan liked the reassuring dismissal of emotions they implied.

‘If I were a synth-’ Parrish began.

They’d reached the elevator. Adam tapped the console, and Ronan kicked the door.

‘- I wouldn’t be faulty.’

Ronan didn’t look around. He knew what Parrish meant. ‘All synthetics have quirks.’ He argued readily. ‘It’s probably programmed.’

‘What about Noah?’

‘Noah.’ Ronan grinned. ‘Is a puddle of nerves shaped like a human.’

Adam smiled back, faintly. ‘That’s a big quirk.’

The door silently slid open. Ronan wandered in to the back wall, and Adam stepped just over the threshold. Conservation of energy. He was reliable.

Ronan shrugged. ‘I think it’s more of a lifestyle choice.’

 

 

 

Terminus was the end of the universe.

For most people, anyway.

It wasn’t as though they didn’t look beyond the space station, into the visible galaxies nearby. They _knew_ enough about what was out there. But there wasn’t the money or the need to move on, to expand any further. Not yet, anyway.

People still did it. Travelled past Terminus. Mining colonists, usually, or cult settlers, or even the occasional pilgrim on a spiritual quest. Terminus wasn’t the edge of the colonised world, not by a long stretch. It was, arguably, the edge of “civilisation”.

Ronan travelled beyond Terminus to make a living. He travelled beyond Terminus because the end of the human universe was the beginning of his universe. And most importantly, he travelled beyond Terminus because Gansey travelled beyond Terminus.

Gansey didn’t do it for the money. He never had. If it had been about money, he and Ronan would have retired after their first two trips. Barring unforeseen economic upheaval, they would have been set for life.

Gansey did it for the same reasons as Ronan. Partly Gansey did it because Gansey just did it. It was just… what he did. Who he was. But he definitely did it because of the unknown.

The New World, stretching out vast distances in every direction from the burnt out shell of the original Earth, maintained a lot of the Old Order. The old bullshit. Economics, believe it or not. Capitalism. You could play politics or the trade market the same way as ever. Or you could take the classic route, and profit off the foibles of human psychology. It still all _worked_. If you did it well (and especially if you started from a good position initially) then you’d come out on top.

But the Old Order didn’t hold with Gansey. He didn’t even push the frontier because he was trying to drag the New World along behind him. He just did it because the unknown was the purest thing left in the world, untouched by mankind. Ronan thought that was how Gansey kept his ideals. He stayed as far away from the Old Order (and thus mankind), as possible.

He’d always taken Ronan with him. Ever since they’d met.

Parrish was contemplating an identical series of laser scalpels with unnerving concentration, and Ronan reluctantly left his memories in order to pick one up and wave it around experimentally.

‘You planning on dissecting more shit?’ He asked, flicking the laser on and off next to Parrish’s head.

‘Sooner than you think.’ Adam answered, but as ever, his attempt at a threat was woefully unconvincing.

‘Are you nearly finished?’

‘Why?’ Parrish feigned surprise. ‘Are you bored?’

Ronan dropped the scalpel. ‘Excessively. Is there some level of tedium saturation you’re aiming to achieve?’

Parrish selected one of the scalpels (not the one Ronan had mistreated) and shrugged. ‘I told you to go.’

‘Go where? This place is one giant dead end.’

The response was a raised eyebrow, without even the decency to look up from the thermo-conductive plating he was inspecting. ‘Gansey already told me-’

Ronan swore. Of course, Parrish already knew. Of course Parrish was just winding him up.

‘- that I’m not allowed to buy alcohol for you.’

Dammit. _Shit_. ‘Since when do you listen to Gansey?’

‘He’s my captain.’ Parrish said, and added as an afterthought; ‘And when I agree with him.’

‘Ha.’

‘I’m done.’ Parrish navigated back into the walkway, and turned towards the elevator. ‘Last time you drank, you set the mess on fire. Again.’

‘Pfft.’ Ronan gestured dismissively. ‘It’s not like it was so great before. And I was cooking.’

‘I don’t think the rations are supposed to be rehydrated with Demeterian whisky. Or toasted on an open flame.’

‘I thought the charred flavour really worked for the hydro-bars.’

Adam didn’t argue with that point.

 

 

‘So when did our beneficent captain say we were shipping out?’ Ronan asked, as they exited the elevator. He’d demanded a trip to R deck, at least, because if he couldn’t get liquor than by hell he was getting something else indulgent.

‘A few days yet.’ Parrish answered, scoping out the food wares intently. ‘Helen’s arriving this evening.’

Ronan hesitated momentarily. ‘Helen?’ Gansey hadn’t mentioned her. ‘We headed some place exciting?’

Helen always meant exciting. Exciting always meant dangerous. Dangerous always meant fun.

The last time Helen had travelled with them, Ronan had nearly frozen to death. So had Adam, and judging by the way he glanced over pointedly, he remembered it well.

‘I’m not sure.’ One shop was exhibiting what looked like the entire roasted body of an unidentifiable mutant farm animal, and Adam practically started drooling. ‘I don’t think he has a destination yet. The Governor requested a meeting. Might be a job.’

Ronan frowned. ‘Gross.’ He caught Parrish’s sleeve and dragged him towards a shop decorated in golden fabric.

‘Not that, Lynch.’ Parrish protested, and Ronan ignored him.

They crossed the threshold, and were immediately out of place, drably coloured and dubiously untidy amidst glowing fabrics, benches, and food.

It was the chocolates Ronan wanted. From tiny round orbs to slabs the size of a man’s arm, each wrapped in golden fabric, or enclosed in golden boxes.

The gaudiness was singularly horrifying. Parrish automatically shrank to a fraction of his normal size just having to stand amongst it. But the food, _fuck_ , Demeterian food was the best. They took perfection to a whole other level.

It was no accident that Gansey was a golden child of Demeter.

It probably was an accident that he’d ended up so far from home, in the company of misfits and failing to carry out his planetary obligations to sit around being beautiful and perfect all the time.

Oddly enough (and it amused Ronan no end), Gansey was actually a rebel. In the least menacing way possible, of course.

In some ways, so was Helen. Zooming around the inner galaxies, being brilliant and working for some of the most famous figures Ronan had never heard of. Accomplishing things, which wasn’t hugely respectful of the Demeterian tradition of being sort of inactively lovely. But she was lauded for her achievements, so that was a bonus to the planet’s reputation.

One day, maybe after they were all dead, Gansey would be too. For mapping the distant universe. For recording knowledge vital to the future of humankind. Shit like that.

Ronan untidily scooped an armful of treats from various places and a painfully attractive assistant helpfully (if doubtfully) gave him a box to put it all in.

Adam freed himself from the shop with sincere relief. ‘You’re going to have to eat all that before we leave.’ He pointed out disparagingly. ‘It’ll rot while we’re in stasis.’

‘I’ll just put it in your cryostore.’ Ronan responded. ‘With the frozen specimens. Here, try this glazed thing-’

He was shoving the chunk of chocolate at Parrish (who, for all his complaining, was hardly unwilling) when a figure amongst a group of people gathered a few yards away caught his eye.

They were Corpsmen, undoubtedly. Many of them youthful, despite insignia indicating relatively long service.

The Corps didn’t operate through Terminus often. There just wasn’t enough crime to legitimise mobilising the military so far from the central galaxies. But hell, here they were. At least one squad, nearly six of them, and of fucking course, it had to be _Kavinsky_.

Parrish noted his sudden hesitation. ‘Problem?’ He followed Ronan’s gaze, identified the half armoured figures.

‘Nightmare.’ Ronan answered. Parrish looked back around, but Ronan was already moving, retreating towards the elevators, putting as many figures in the crowd between himself and Kavinsky as possible. Parrish followed.

 

 

 

Gansey wasn’t back from his meeting when they reached the ship, but Sargent was on the bridge. She wrinkled her nose at Ronan’s food.

‘We might have progressed as a species, Lynch, but diabetes will still get you.’

Ronan dropped the box on Gansey’s navcon and slumped into his chair. Parrish had disappeared to unpack his own shopping.

‘The captain banned alcohol.’ Ronan shrugged. ‘What am I s’posed to do?’

It was frustrating him that Gansey wasn’t here. Seeing Kavinsky put him on edge, frayed his nerves. They should get away from Terminus as soon as possible, if the Corps was dicking around there.

Blue frowned. ‘Why? I thought you really improved those hydro-bars.’

‘Right?’ He extended a hand and she permitted a fist-bump.

‘You’d look weirder with your eyebrows burned off though.’ She continued. ‘Someone would mistake you for a non-human life form.’

‘Thanks, Sargent.’

‘Ronan.’ Noah entered the room, pace faltering characteristically. ‘You’re back.’ His expression fluctuated from enthusiasm to concern and back again.

Ronan spread his hands in gratification. ‘What’s up?’

‘Gansey asked…’ Noah hesitated again, looking tentative, or confused. One of the two. Or both.

He hadn’t really mastered the “expression” bit yet. He seemed to have the full experience of the emotions, just not… the capacity to cope with them.

Which, realistically, seemed like a prerequisite for joining this ship’s crew.

‘Yeah, Noah?’

‘Uh. Oh. He asked if you were back. He asked if you were back, then he asked if you’d gone with Adam. And he said… oh. He said he needed to talk to you. Urgently.’

Ronan glanced at Blue, and she shrugged. Gansey must have contacted the ship from Terminus, which was why Noah had gotten the message. Noah always remembered messages, that wasn’t the problem. It was just that he had something of a tendency towards burying the lead.

‘Did he say anything else?’

‘Uh.’ Noah looked, possibly, mildly quizzical. ‘Yes. He said to calm you down.’

Ronan scowled. That didn’t sound good. In fact, that sounded like Gansey already knew Kavinsky was on Terminus. And unless Gansey had _seen_ him, and had immediately contacted the ship to warn Ronan… then Kavinsky’s presence (and the presence of the Corps), probably had something to do with the Governor asking for a meeting.

 

 

 

‘No fucking way.’

‘Ronan.’

‘No. Fuck that. Fuck this. No.’

‘Ronan, it’s a serious situation.’

‘I don’t care if it’s the fucking apocalypse.’ Ronan completed another angry lap of the navcon. ‘You can’t let those pricks on this ship.’

Colonists? No. Corpsmen? Absolutely not a fucking chance. Kavinsky? Ronan would rather fly his cruiser into a star.

‘People could be dying.’ Gansey argued.

‘By the time we reach them, they’ll be dead.’ Ronan snapped. ‘Why doesn’t Greenmantle send his own fucking mercenaries? Better yet, why doesn’t the Corps take their own fucking ship?’

‘I don’t like it either.’ Gansey said patiently. Behind him, Blue drummed her fingers on her command console thoughtfully. ‘But this is the fastest ship that can handle that distance, and the Corps is going because those are civilians out there, not Greenmantle’s employees.’

It was true. Gansey’s ship, the Henrietta, was the fastest in deep space. It was simple enough to use a warp drive in the inner galaxies, because refuelling outposts were so close together, but out here burning energy unduly fast was likely to leave a ship stranded and a crew susceptible to slow death from starvation. Gansey and Ronan had honed their fuel conservation to a knife point, and their efficiency had only improved since Blue had become their pilot and Noah had modified the shipboard computer protocols.

And sure, it wasn’t the colonists’ fault that Greenmantle had funded their little expedition. Poor bastards had probably thought the old dickbag was being philanthropic. And if they’d landed on some planet with giant bugs, or failed their food production attempts, that was just shitty luck.

But that didn’t mean Kavinsky could get on this ship.

‘Not him.’ Ronan shook his head vehemently. ‘He can’t be trusted. You _know_ that.’

‘He’s got a record.’ Gansey conceded, shrugging helplessly. ‘A perfect record and a good rank.’

‘And you know how you get those in the Corps, right?’ Ronan growled and slammed his fist down on the edge of the navcon, and Gansey winced protectively. ‘Paid murder.’

‘Oh, great.’ Blue interjected sarcastically. ‘Should I be more or less impressed that both of you were Corps cadets?’

Gansey and Ronan protested simultaneously.

‘It was _piloting_!’

‘We didn’t _graduate_!’

Blue rolled her eyes. ‘Wow. Yeah. Very principled.’

‘We left.’ Gansey looked wounded. ‘I think we did okay.’

‘There must have been others ways you rich kids could learn to pilot.’ She pointed out. ‘Why’d you join in the first place?’

They exchanged a dubious look.

Eventually Gansey answered, doubtfully. ‘It seemed like the honourable thing to do… at the time. Not just buying skills to play with in our home galaxies, but joining the defence force and… contributing.’

She swivelled her chair and scrutinised them. ‘Okay. I’ll buy that for you, _maybe_ , but not Lynch.’

‘Perhaps my abiding compassion for fellow humans insisted I take up arms for their protection.’ Ronan shrugged disinterestedly.

Blue smirked. ‘Right. And I grew up in a palace made of gold.’

Ronan returned to the original argument. ‘The point is, Kavinsky’s a bastard and we’re not doing this.’

‘We _are_ doing this.’ Gansey insisted. ‘This isn’t a game, Ronan. If there are people out there in danger, we have an obligation to take them help. And… and you can deal with Kavinsky. I mean, if anything happens. You’ve probably still got some influence with him.’

Ronan glowered, and Blue looked up curiously. ‘What’s this now? Influence?’

‘It’s mostly going to be stasis.’ Gansey reasoned. ‘We’ll barely have to see them.’

Unwillingly, Ronan leaned back, clutching the edge of the navcon so tight it hurt. ‘When do we leave?’

Gansey looked at Blue, and she saluted theatrically; ‘Your orders, Captain?’

He sighed. ‘Tomorrow.’


	2. Express elevator to hell

The Corps sent twelve of their finest… a singular collection of psychopaths and killers.

There was no introduction. The mission was paramount, so Gansey had instructed his crew to make immediate preparations for departure. The soldiers were loaded and packed in without formalities. A dozen extra stasis pods were a burden, but installation was a problem for Cheng and Parrish, and energy management for Sargent and Noah.

Ronan’s only task, reiterated regularly by Gansey, was to avoid starting a fight. In fact, he was advised to avoid Kavinsky altogether, which would have been good advice… if they hadn’t been about to share a four month deep space voyage on a very small ship.

And it was Kavinsky, so Ronan knew he’d manage get his teeth in somehow. He always was an irrepressible asshole.

Ronan focused on tending to Henrietta’s weapons system, modifying his cruiser to stow artillery instead of exploration equipment, and considering sabotaging Kavinsky’s stasis pod so he mysteriously never woke up.

The Corpsmen were on the ship before Ronan even realised, and placed in stasis before the Henrietta even launched.

Her crew followed later. Cheng made last minute checks on the pods before they went under (putting paid to Ronan’s murder plot), Noah promised to be vigilant and not watch them sleep creepily like last time. Blue and Helen were unenthused about having to wake up in a room full (stupidly full) of men.

Ronan allowed himself the wistful hope that the ship would crash and somehow only the crew would survive.

Gansey lined them all up and locked them down.

He was always the last to go in, keeping watch like an anxious parent. And Noah would pat the windows of their temporary coffins and smile in an attempt to be reassuring. Then, they slept.

 

 

 

Just like that, it was nearly two months later.

Stasis always felt like a kick in the head. That was probably fair, given that it was essentially a time-lock coma, but the effect never seemed to get old. And Ronan had done it a _lot_.

For a few minutes, there was the semi-pleasant sensation of not remembering exactly what was going on. He recognised Blue, grimacing as she sat up nearby. Gansey, beyond her, scanning the room with faint concern, as he attempted to re-establish full awareness of his surroundings. Parrish, legs already out of the pod and leaning his forehead into one palm. Cheng, who wouldn’t sit up or open his eyes for love nor money until his nausea subsided.

Then Ronan noticed the extra cargo in the room, and the rows of additional personal lockers, and it came back to him in an unpleasant rush.

The other pods (Cheng had organised them concentrically to fit them all in) were open, but it was difficult to see the occupants, most of whom were still struggling to sit up.

As much as Ronan would have liked to oblige his captain’s order by immediately leaving, there wasn’t a single functional organ in his body. His kidneys, in particular, seemed bemused by the whole situation.

Someone in the outer circle managed to stand up, on wobbly legs, and stumbled away towards the lockers. Another figure, more familiar and composed, gradually came into focus as Helen.

And finally, that unmistakeable slouch. The way Kavinsky was stretching his leg across somebody else’s pod, trapping them in it. And the fact that his mouth was already moving, an unstoppable generator of bullshit.

Ronan told himself to look at Gansey instead, but nothing happened.

Kavinsky looked older. Older than they had been as cadets, obviously, but also older than Ronan was currently.

Ronan had spent more years in stasis than he’d spent alive… It was likely that Kavinsky had too. But he must have seen more time in the real world than Ronan. Or at least, he’d spent more time shooting at the real world.

In this world, the year you were born stopped being relevant when you hit puberty. Earlier, if your parents were rich. Any time in stasis removed your ability to count age from an established date.

Ronan was younger than Gansey, but he wasn’t sure by how much. He had no idea about Kavinsky, but all three of them had been in the Corps at the same time and at roughly the same age. Now Kavinsky was here… in his mid-twenties, maybe? And Ronan and Gansey had aged only a few years comparatively.

That was without taking into consideration Blue, who came from a family of space wanderers, Cheng, who refused to even acknowledge his birth year, and Parrish, who had once admitted that he’d only been in stasis twice before Gansey had hired him, which made him… terrifyingly young.

And it made Ronan’s birth year easily thirty, forty, fuck knows how many years earlier than his.

The thing was, it didn’t matter. It was absurd to look at someone and wonder how long they’d spent being ferried non-functional across the universe. To try and factor it into any relationship, when it was essentially as arbitrary as the number of eyelashes they had.

It did mean that family had to travel together for life.

That was easy. There wasn’t a journey Gansey would take that Ronan wouldn’t.

Kavinsky had longer hair now, and more scars (many more than the ones Ronan had given him). He was leaner than the lanky adolescent Ronan remembered. Still deceptively boyish. And his grin still made Ronan want to break things and set them on fire.

Ronan got upright. He could try and get out of the room, but now he wasn’t so sure he wanted to.

This was the danger. The trap. He was a cadet again and craving a fight.

Noah materialised in front of him, and produced a pretty decent smile. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Shithouse.’ Ronan answered, relieved to have his view of Kavinsky blocked. ‘How was the vacation?’

‘Pleasant.’ Noah replied, looking unconvinced by his own response. ‘I catalogued all the personal belongings on the ship.’

‘Sounds wild.’

‘It wasn’t. You do have many strange objects in your room, though.’

Blue sniggered, holding Ronan’s arm for balance while she pulled slacks on over her shorts. ‘Yeah I’ll bet.’

Ronan tipped her sideways.

There were too many people in the room, most of them clattering through the lockers and dragging on military uniform. Ronan let Noah insistently guide him towards the door. Gansey must have asked him to intervene.

It didn’t prevent Kavinsky from catching his eye, holding it while his grin widened, scorching and infuriating.

 

 

 

A briefing on the bridge brought them face to face. Ronan would have preferred fist to face, but he wasn’t left with much of a say.

The Corps Lieutenant was a squirrelly man called Whelk, which seemed like a nearly very apt name. He looked as displeased about the travel arrangements as Ronan felt, which wasn’t a confidence booster. Kavinsky had Sergeant’s insignia on his jacket. It was unbelievable. Literally. Ronan couldn’t believe it.

Gansey held court at the navcon, and Ronan stood on one side, arms crossed. Parrish kept to the left, as always, a few feet away, listening in silence with his gaze on the hologram of the planet below. Blue was in her chair, and Noah was sitting in the copilot’s position. Cheng was leaning on one corner of the con, manipulating the tech specs of the colony ship the settlers had taken to the surface. Helen stood next to Gansey, examining the planet, and examining the soldiers.

They were already in orbit. And Ronan was grimly aware of how this was going to - necessarily - play out.

‘The situation.’ Whelk began. ‘Is this.’

Out of the corner of his eye, Ronan saw Blue smirk automatically.

‘Two months ago we received a distress call from the colony on Silvanus 343. They claimed there was some kind of biological threat to their survival, and requested immediate military assistance.’

‘Biological threat?’ Gansey repeated curiously.

Parrish moved his head, but didn’t weigh in.

‘There was no specific identification. All subsequent contact attempts have failed.’

Blue added; ‘They’re still broadcasting the call, but they won’t respond to a hail, so you’ll have to drop in unannounced.’

Ronan’s attention caught on Kavinsky, again. He felt like every fibre of his body was demanding a demonstration of violence. Kavinsky was triumphantly aware of his gaze. He leaned on the navcon and stared back, one corner of his mouth lifted in a sneer.

‘What’s the atmosphere?’ Gansey asked, slightly too loudly, but it didn’t distract either of them.

‘Breathable.’ Adam said, and that was almost enough to pull Ronan’s focus. ‘Oxygen rich, though. The mining facility is producing a lot of carbon dioxide, which makes the immediate area slightly safer, but helmets are the best option.’

Helen nodded across to him. ‘I would recommend antioxidant supplements to decrease the risk of hyperoxia if exposed.’

‘Life forms?’ Gansey inquired, and Whelk shrugged.

‘No advanced life was reported on the initial survey. Native animals are prolific, but the colony site is sealed and all external activity is conducted in GM vehicles.’

‘Could be a contaminant in the food source. Or an airborne disease.’ Helen noted cheerfully. ‘Or a parasite.’

Under any other circumstances, Ronan would have enjoyed her inappropriate breeziness.

‘How extensive was the initial survey?’ Gansey interjected.

‘It was a biological scan from a single location.’

There was a pause, as the room digested this information. That was a notoriously inadequate technique for conducting a survey, normally used by people desperate to get a program running at low cost.

‘So.’ Gansey frowned, turned over how to best phrase the obvious evaluation. ‘This could be -’

‘We’re looking at an alien incursion.’ Whelk asserted coldly.

Another brief silence. Ronan watched Kavinsky’s eyelashes flicker against his skin with every slow, predatory blink.

‘What’s the plan?’ Gansey said finally.

Whelk, to Ronan’s disgust, looked to his subordinate.

Kavinsky straightened on his arms, finally breaking eye contact just to cut his eyes maliciously towards Gansey.

‘Whelk’ll take a team to collect survivors, and I’ll take the rest and burn the alien fuckers we find. Lynch’ll have to defend the ship, if he can cope.’

Ronan felt rather than saw Gansey’s alarm. ‘He’s _not_ -’

‘He’s the carrier pilot.’ There was that grin, and Ronan fought the urge to lean over the table and slap him. ‘Am I wrong? Or is the leash even shorter now, Dick?’

The sound of his voice was like an exhortation to fight, just fight, no matter the consequences. Gansey had adopted an expression of controlled exasperation. Helen looked blatantly unimpressed with Kavinsky’s entire personality. The others had descended into cautious silence.

Ronan raised his chin, and smirked.

Gansey started shaking his head. ‘You have your _own_ pilot.’

He was protective, as always. But the best method of dealing with Kavinsky was Ronan’s.

‘My ship.’ Ronan conceded, showing his teeth. ‘I pilot.’

Parrish said flatly; ‘I’ll go, if there’s room.’

Kavinsky glanced at him, disinterested and mocking. ‘No civilians.’

‘I can classify the threat, if it’s biological. Or environmental.’

Ronan wanted to glare at him, but there was no way a warning would go unnoticed by Kavinsky. Helpfully, the dickhead himself had no interest in inviting Henrietta’s Science Officer.

‘We’re here to annihilate it, not study the fucking thing.’

Parrish was unperturbed, coolly holding Kavinsky’s gaze.

‘No.’ Whelk interrupted. ‘We could use an SO. We should take an MO, too, if you’re willing.’ This was directed at Helen, although he didn’t pause for her acknowledgement. ‘And the synth would be useful for accessing the ship systems.’

Kavinsky hesitated momentarily, turning the concept over in his head. It wouldn’t just be Ronan trapped down there with him, but others too. He wasn’t keen, but it wouldn’t take him long to realise that it was more cruel that way.

‘What’s the internal structure like?’ Helen asked. ‘Where are the teams going?’

‘The habitable site is mainly occupied with the settlement ship.’ Cheng explained, clearly startling Whelk, who had obviously forgotten his presence. ‘A few external structures, but any survivors are likely inside the ship.’

‘A sweep for breaches will lead us right to the bugs.’ Kavinsky said smugly. Survivors were clearly as far from his mind as sanity was.

‘Get them ready.’ Whelk instructed. ‘I want the cruiser launched within the hour.’

The grin returned, a simmering promise of later conflict, and Kavinsky slunk out, closely followed by the lieutenant.

The moment the door slid closed Sargent snorted. ‘What a dickhead.’

Noah rose from his chair, tentative and miserable. ‘I don’t want to go.’

Gansey’s facade was beginning to crack. It was bad enough risking Ronan on a planet with an unidentified threat, but Parrish and Noah too, and his _sister_? There was only so much an already anxious guy could take. ‘This is not a civilian mission.’ He objected strenuously. ‘None of you can go.’

’I’m not a civilian.’ Noah pointed out meekly, adding; ‘But I still don’t want to go.’

He was close to the navcon, and Ronan laid a hand on his shoulder.

‘Look.’ He glanced at Helen, at Adam. Pretended this was just for Noah, not for them. ‘Things are gonna get rough down there. But we can handle it. Probably. Maybe.’

He felt Helen draw herself up, in full Gansey style. Shift into the hardest version of herself. Adam met his gaze, unflinching.

‘He can’t put you at risk.’ Gansey protested. ‘He can’t-’

Ronan could see him accelerating towards panic.

‘It’ll be fine.’ Helen reassured him confidently. ‘We’ll just use them as human shields.’

 

 

 

Helen acted as Ronan’s copilot in the cruiser.

Normally it would have been Parrish, or Noah. But Gansey was already uneasy, and as much as Ronan despised leaving the others among the stacked weapons and the soldiers, he was willing to bet a lot on Kavinsky’s dismissiveness as a temporary shield.

Kavinsky didn’t know Parrish, and he’d ignore Noah as a synth.

He knew Helen was a Gansey. That made her the most prominent target.

All twelve unruly soldiers crammed into the cruiser limited the free space. There was little room to spare up front, but Kavinsky still found his way in, while Ronan was preparing for the drop out of cargo. He had to synchronise with Cheng and Sargent in the Henrietta for a manual release. Occasionally Noah would perform all the functions simultaneously, but Ronan thought the traditional method was too much of a thrill to give up.

He felt the hand on his shoulder, and Kavinsky so close Ronan could hear his breathing.

‘Guess you’re a Corps pilot after all, Lynch. Wasn’t so hard, was it?’

Ronan ignored him, responding to Cheng’s comments about the ship over comms instead.

’Fuck no.’ Kavinsky whistled, and Ronan felt him reach across the cabin. Ronan seized his wrist, before he managed to curl his fingers around the rifle. It was propped between Ronan’s chair and the wall, a safety-locked but fully charged PCR5600. ‘You don’t deserve a weapon like this.’

Gansey had begrudgingly allowed Ronan to bring it on the Henrietta years earlier, but he actively argued to prevent it from joining them on any ground missions. In this case, Ronan had demanded an exception, because even without the planetary hostiles there was Kavinsky to contend with. There was a handgun belt under his chair, too, but he’d have to wear it over his spacesuit, and gloves were hardly conducive for small arms weapons.

‘Can’t cope with me handling your gear, Lynch?’

Helen released a world-weary sigh.

Ronan grit his teeth and refused to answer. ‘We clear for launch?’

Cheng said; ‘Clear.’

Sargent added; ‘Clear.’

Ronan contemplated telling Kavinsky to sit the fuck down, or not telling him and hoping he was immediately incapacitated by a head wound.

‘Everyone locked in?’ Helen made the decision for him, shooting Kavinsky an imperious glare. ‘We’re dropping in twenty.’

Kavinsky bared his teeth at her and left.

Whelk answered in the affirmative, obviously once Kavinsky had been secured, and Ronan retracted the landing gear.

‘Opening the bay doors.’ Cheng reported.

‘You’re on the hook.’ Sargent acknowledged.

‘On my mark.’

The cruiser started to rock from the outflow of air through the bay doors below it. Several soldiers shouted overexcitedly from the cargo hold.

‘5.’ Ronan adjusted the nose angle. ‘4.’

‘3.’ Cheng’s voice mirrored his. Helen’s too, for the benefit of the passengers. ‘2.’

Somewhere, Ronan predicted Blue was having to hold Gansey’s hand.

Probably Noah was trying to hold Parrish’s.

‘1.’ Ronan pressed his thumb to the switch. Helen curled her fingers around the wall straps. ‘Mark.’

They dropped into space.


	3. Likes; long walks on the beach, suicide missions in outer space, and explosions.

The cruiser hit the atmosphere and rapidly plunged into free fall. Ronan could hear more shouting behind him, but Helen didn’t give any indication that it was something to worry about.

Cheng noted that one of the couplings on the Henrietta was sticking, but they’d scraped out without incident.

He’d provided a structural map of the site, but there was no topographical information, so Ronan had to rely on the scanners to keep them out of trouble when they dropped closer to the planet surface.

‘Altitude 21,000 over base. Bearing 35 degrees.’

Gansey liked to call Ronan ‘his best pilot’, which was really just a subtle way of saying it was okay that Ronan was only good at one thing. Blue was a damn good pilot too, but occasionally even she would raise an impressed eyebrow at some absurdly dangerous stunt Ronan could pull in the cruiser. Long haul shipping was a different game to crashing in and out of the atmosphere, and the warp speed a little cruiser could manage between close objects in space tended to give people (other than Ronan) nausea.

‘Turbulence.’ Ronan advised grimly.

Helen reached across him and jostled the stabiliser switches. ‘Dammit.’ She relayed the warning.

Actually, Ronan was good at other things, too. They just weren’t things Gansey really approved of. Or chose to acknowledge.

‘Alt 18,000. Switching to hypsographic mapping now.’

There wasn’t much elevation in the area. The scanner showed the nearest peak, at about 2,500, still well below them, and probably not even close to the settlement.

‘Range?’

‘Inbound… 500. You’re going to have to loop around.’

‘Got it. 11,000.’

‘Heavy stocking.’

‘Base?’

‘Cleared. Landing pad to the south.’

‘8000.’ Flight was steadying out. There was a strong wind, and the scan suggested the settlement was in the neck of a broad valley, catching a tunnel effect of air coming up off the nearby lake. They were catching a few rays of daylight from the closest star, but nothing that dispersed the heavy, impenetrable fog seeping through the forests.

‘4000. Do you see the beacon?’

‘Not yet.’

‘2000.’ The scanner was showing the little cubed peaks and troughs of the settlement ship. That style of ship was designed to drop onto a planet and hunch there, like an ugly toad, withstanding whatever weather or hostility they received. The method was crude, and to a point Ronan wasn’t really sympathetic when colonists got their asses handed back to them for what was basically invasion.

‘900.’ Ronan swung the tail of the cruiser, circling over the edges of the settlement. He squinted at the scanner screen. ‘Are you reading this?’

‘What have you got?’ Helen answered, watching the rangefinder. ‘I have 600 here.’

Ronan had sighted the landing pad, but he hesitated, letting the cruiser spin lazily in a semi-circle.

Someone thumped the wall of the cargo hold. ‘Are you a pilot or a pussy?’

There was a peal of laughter. Ronan scowled.

‘Hold it.’ Helen leaned across again. ‘I see it.’

‘Debris.’ Ronan confirmed irritably. ‘On the landing pad.’

‘Locating a secondary landing site.’ She advised.

Ronan registered the sound of movement behind him. The Corpsmen must have been out of their seats, in motion, equipping weapons.

‘There’s a clearing bearing 65 degrees.’ Helen provided. ‘Looks like an agricultural enclosure.’

Ronan slowed the ship, adjusted their angle. He could see the area, vaguely, but it was shrouded in mist. ‘Any motion there?’ God forbid he crushed any animals.

‘There’s a little interference.’ Helen answered. ‘But it looks empty.’

‘Fine.’

He extended the landing gear as Helen warned the passengers, and rotated the ship very gently until it was comfortably within the bounds of the enclosure. The ground was springy, and Ronan felt the gears sink slightly as the ship settled. The soldiers in the back were already thumping around and clattering into each other. Helen offered Ronan his helmet, and someone behind them shouted; ‘Open the door.’

‘Get in line, fuckers.’ Another person howled. ‘Clean the fuck up.’

Everything went quiet, aside from a bit of shuffling and jostling.

Ronan looked sideways at Helen and secured his helmet.

He could hear Kavinsky, snarling at his soldiers, slightly muffled, and the odd grunted response. He opened the loading bay doors, and heard the thud of boots receding as the ramp dropped.

Helen stood, spared him an unenthused look, and strode into the cargo hold. Ronan followed, more slowly, slinging the plasma rifle over his shoulder. This was going to suck.

 

 

 

Kavinsky’s soldiers were already dividing into teams. None of them were wearing sealed suits or helmets, but all of them were in body armour and carrying some serious weaponry. One had a gun that was easily half his own height. Someone else was carrying a rifle, with a rocket launcher strapped across his back.

Noah didn’t have a helmet on either, but he looked predictably anxious about it.

‘Isn’t it dangerous?’ He was asking Parrish. ‘What if it’s a disease?’

Parrish nodded to Helen politely, and to Ronan as he got closer. ‘If it helps, I don’t think they would have asked for the military if they were dealing with an airborne contagion.’

Noah nodded tentatively. ‘Okay. Sure.’

‘High as kites.’ Helen noted, watching the armoured figures sweep the area . ‘Half of them probably can’t feel anything.’

‘Steroids, stimulants.’ Adam added. ‘We’ll be lucky if they don’t shoot at survivors.’

‘Hey, assholes.’ Kaminsky’s teeth glinted in the darkness. ‘Look at this shit.’

Parrish obliged first, probably because he recognised that resisting Kavinsky would only make things worse. He edged between the shoulders of two soldiers, and knelt. Helen followed, but Ronan circled the group, wary.

He could still see the corpse from another angle. It looked like a sheep, but it must have been dead a few weeks at least. Parrish examined it with caution.

‘See this?’ He tipped the head carefully, and Helen leaned closer. ‘Punctured the skull here.’

‘Plasma weapon?’ She asked suspiciously, but he shook his head.

‘Too clean. Plasma would have take the whole thing apart. This was a high pressure impact, took a chunk out without destroying the skull.’

Noah made a soft, unhappy noise, and Kavinsky chuckled. ‘Awesome.’

‘Fucking bugs, then.’ Someone else jeered. ‘Let’s get ‘em.’

Kavinsky gestured to Parrish and Helen.

’Take off the helmets, you cowards. No parasites here gonna crawl in your eyeballs.’

‘That’s not certain.’ Parrish corrected, standing up. ‘You should all avoid contact with any alien substances.’

Kavinsky stepped over the corpse in one stride, and seized the sides of Adam’s helmet. Ronan’s muscles tightened, preparing him to spring forward.

‘You’ll get substances.’ Kavinsky jerked the helmet, and it unlatched. He pulled it off and tossed it on the ground. ‘If you don’t shut your fucking mouth.’

Ronan was two seconds from tackling Kavinsky to the ground, but Adam’s impassivity was impressive. He repeated flatly; ‘Don’t ingest anything.’

Kavinsky smirked and spun away.

‘Change of plan, since Lynch pussied out. Whelk, Jiang, Rutherford, take the MO and the synth round the front. Proko, take Carruthers and the SO.’

Ronan pulled off his helmet, sneering at Whelk’s submission. He felt Kavinsky’s gaze scraping over him, making his nerves prickle. Kavinsky wouldn’t leave him with the ship. He wouldn’t be able to pass up the opportunity to drag Ronan around. ‘Brand, seal the ship and set up a cannon. Lynch, Skov, with me. Clear the ground in pairs and find another entry. _Go_ , you dickheads.’

 

 

 

There was an old airlock entry close to the enclosure. Ronan kept track of Parrish from a distance, fuming about losing sight of Helen and Noah.

It may have been beneficial. They could be safer, further from Kavinsky, and Whelk had to uphold his image, at least, and return them unscathed.

The exterior door of the airlock opened, but the internal door was locked, and the console was smashed. One of Kavinsky’s brilliant sidekicks, Skovron, observed sagely; ‘Looks like they didn’t want anyone getting in.’

Ronan watched from the ramp while they picked through the chunks of broken tech, until Kavinsky shouted for another one of his idiots.

It was Proko, with the rocket launcher on his back, which he willingly handed over.

All of it was familiar. Artillery, firepower, adrenaline. That insane glint in Kavinsky’s eyes, that made Ronan feel like death was around every corner. The excitement, an old habit carved into his bones from the years in the Corps. Before Gansey. Before Ronan had realised there could be anything else.

Adam, following Proko, came close enough to see what was going on, and suddenly started forward. ‘Wait.’

Kavinsky ignored him, raising the rocket launcher to his shoulder.

Ronan would have blocked Adam from getting onto the ramp, if he’d realised Parrish was actually foolhardy enough to grab Kavinsky’s arm with one hand. ‘You’ll destroy the life support-’

Kavinsky dropped the weapon from one hand just so he could slam his elbow savagely back into Parrish’s chest.

Adam stumbled, slipping on the ramp with clenched teeth, just as Kavinsky found the trigger.

The rocket hissed as it launched, and Ronan only had time to register that sound, and Adam starting to straighten, before he lunged forward. He managed to get both hands over Adam’s ears, forcefully dragging him off the ramp and onto the damp earth.

The noise was a shock, even to him. A confined space, and a fucking explosive? Kavinsky was out of his mind. Ronan felt the noise more than he heard it, and after that there was nothing but ringing.

Heat exploded from the narrow entryway, engulfing them instantly, and Ronan staggered. Adam’s hands were covering his, head tipped down to the ground, unresisting.

Ronan couldn’t hear anything but that god-awful ringing.

 _Is that what it’s like?_ He wondered grimly.

Behind him there was more heat. Kavinsky had blown out the door, sure enough, and he’d managed to set something on fire, burning with the intensity (and stench) of old-school gasoline. The maniac was still standing on the ramp, somehow, grinning into the flames.

Adam pulled Ronan’s hand off his right ear, and through a haze of smoke Ronan saw him speak, experimentally, and his expression shift to relief, but he frowned when Ronan squinted blankly back at him. He moved his hands.

_That…asshole… is crazy._

It had taken time, but Ronan had gradually acquired the fundamentals of effectively communicating with Parrish.

There were verbal rules, like _shouting never worked_. Ever. Even if it did express his frustration, he wouldn’t win the argument. There were signing rules, like _don’t pretend you know what you’re doing if you don’t_. The rules for lipreading were fairly straightforward; 1) _it’s fucking difficult._ 2) _When you can’t see, it’s fucking impossible._

It was mostly the rude signs and Adam pointing with extreme specificity that got the message across.

Ronan answered. _Watch your back_. He hauled Parrish back to his feet.

 

Ronan remembered when they’d first met, on the bridge of the Henrietta, after the contract had been approved and Parrish was already a permanent member of their crew. He remembered being an asshole, particularly about Adam’s hearing.

He hadn’t realised. He’d just been angrily muttering about Gansey going behind his back and becoming increasingly furious with the way Parrish (who had politely accepted Gansey’s introduction and then turned back to the inventory he was examining) was coolly ignoring him.

When he’d finally shouted at Gansey that they didn’t _need_ a fucking Science Officer because they weren’t a fucking _Corps_ ship, Parrish had looked around.

Only he looked right, before he looked left, because for him that was the only direction sound ever came from.

Ronan’s anger had only fizzled a little, and was mostly replaced with disbelief. He’d made the particularly unsavoury choice of pointing a finger directly at Adam’s face and demanding to know if they had a _deaf_ Science Officer.

Gansey had been on the verge of fainting from horror.

Adam had stared Ronan down, lifted one finger to his left earlobe, and enunciated clearly; ‘Bad ear.’

He’d lowered his hand - no particular hurry - and lifted the other, in a parallel gesture, to indicate his right ear. ‘Good ear.’

He hadn’t been subtle about the implication. Ronan was behaving like a child, so he’d be treated like one.

The reprimand had stung, and the embarrassment lingered. Still, more than once Adam had calmly assured him that it was fine, and Ronan could stop drunkenly apologising whenever he hit the liquor too hard.

It was the only time Ronan could apologise… so he hadn’t stopped.

It wasn’t fine.

At the time, Blue had immediately leaned over in her seat and signed something very evidently offensive about Ronan, and Parrish had kept his face unnaturally blank as he replied.

The memory hung on Ronan, anyway. It was one of the few things he couldn’t forgive himself, one of the irredeemable mistakes. Maybe it was just because it was Parrish, after all, and ever since Ronan had slowly been getting used to him, getting comfortable.

Too comfortable.


	4. Space Super Smash Bros

The airlock was attached to a corridor (or the remnants of a corridor, thanks to the rocket).

Kavinsky sent Proko left, with Parrish and four others.

Ronan followed him to the right, with Skov and another Corporal. He wanted to feel reluctant, but there was anticipation under his ribcage. Hunting, and waiting for the inevitable fight.

Sometimes he craved it, the adrenaline and the violence, the rush of landing a blow or evading one. Just the look in Kavinsky’s eyes had once been enough to make Ronan restless. They’d pass one another in the dorms, or exchange glances during training, and Ronan would instantly want to ditch class and brawl.

He didn’t have to wait long. Skov and the other Corporal diverted down an intersecting corridor, and Ronan and Kavinsky continued, alone.

‘This is your gig now, huh? Space sailing with Dick and his other pets?’ Kavinsky shoved his shoulder, unbalancing him. ‘You gotta know you’re just one of his zoo animals. Part of his little menagerie.’

‘You’re so full of shit, K.’ Ronan drawled.

‘I’m full of shit?’ Kavinsky wheezed with laughter. ‘Do you have any idea how long it’s been? How long you’ve just been trailing after him, begging for scraps?’

‘You still don’t get it.’

‘No.’ He admitted lazily. ‘I really don’t. Gansey’s fucking _dull,_ man. And you’re so fucking desperate for him it’s painful to watch.’

He paused, before adding; ‘That sister of his, though. Fucking fine ass on -’

Ronan had a hand around his throat before he could finish the sentence, and threw him against the corridor wall.

Kavinsky was still laughing. He tried to dislodge Ronan’s grip, and when it didn’t work, grabbed the neck of Ronan’s suit and punched him in the stomach.

Ronan reeled back, breathless. He found his feet, and kicked Kavinsky in the chest.

Ronan hadn’t fought as much since his Corps days, but Kavinsky had obviously been limiting himself to guns and explosives, because they were more evenly matched than Ronan had expected. Drug-fuelled and seasoned, Kavinsky was stronger than him, but Ronan was faster, more coordinated.

Kavinsky tossed him into the wall. Ronan dislocated Kavinsky’s shoulder. It barely slowed him down.

Ronan’s rifle skittered across the floor, discarded. So long as Ronan could stay out of his reach, he could keep the upper hand.

He smashed an elbow into the back of Kavinsky’s head, but took a jab to the temple that slammed him into the wall and retaliated with a roundhouse kick that threw Kavinsky through a doorway into a stock room.

He was picking himself up from the floor when Ronan followed him inside, and with a swift tackle he knocked Ronan off his feet and flung him over a nearby cargo crate.

Ronan groaned, staggered upright, just in time for Kavinsky to collide with him, dragging them both back to the ground.

Kavinsky’s grip was around his neck just below his chin, and Ronan took a fist to the face before he could wedge his knee against Kavinsky’s chest and throw him off. He rolled, balancing enough to swing kick Kavinsky’s jaw.

His head was aching, and his cheek felt damp, in addition to the persistent ringing in his ears acquired from the explosion.

But K was still coming at him, and he needed to dodge, swing a fist at Kavinsky that missed, and drop to take out one of his knees.

The kick glanced off Kavinsky’s shin plate harmlessly, and Kavinsky chuckled. His nose was bleeding, but unsurprisingly, it didn’t seem to bother him.

Ronan corrected, kicked him in the stomach to destabilise him, then the chest to throw him backwards.

Kavinsky kept his balance. His teeth glinted white and red when he grinned. ‘Fuck, didn’t you miss this?’

Ronan grunted; ‘Jackass.’

He despised how easy it was to come back to it. His response to Kavinsky was instinctive, almost involuntary… but it wouldn’t escalate. He couldn’t kill Kavinsky, as much as he wanted to, and K knew it.

Kavinsky managed to pin him, but Ronan wrestled him down to the floor and kicked him sidelong in the head. They were interrupted by the buzz of Kavinsky’s comms, and both of them paused, panting, as he lifted a hand to his ear.

‘Proko, what?’

Ronan edged away, grimacing, swiping blood off his face with one glove.

Kavinsky snorted; ‘Fuck. Split and search.’ He lowered his hand and grinned at Ronan, ignoring his injuries. ‘Your SO’s disappeared.’

It required all of Ronan’s remaining energy not to show the fear crystallising in his gut. ‘Figures. Took your pack all of fifteen minutes to fuck up.’

_Adam, goddammit, what had they done?_

‘They don’t want civilians wasting their time.’ Kavinsky shrugged. ‘They have an objective.’

‘Sure man.’ Ronan lifted an eyebrow belligerently. ‘They are _your_ privates.’

Kavinsky grinned, staggered to his feet, and shoved his shoulder back into place with a grunt.

‘Let’s go find this loser.’

Ronan tried to wipe his face clean, tried to disguise his humming nerves. He shouldn’t have let Parrish go anywhere. He should never have assumed Kavinsky’s dogs were capable of protecting him.

Kavinsky didn’t give any indication of what had happened, but he was at least heading in the right direction. Was Parrish already dead? Had Proko hurt him, or left him behind?

Ronan kept his breathing even, retrieved his rifle, and followed.

‘Proko. Yeah. Carruthers, anything?’

Ronan examined the interior of the ship, as they navigated through the corridors. Everything was intact. Grimy, but that wasn’t unusual even for a functional colony. The corridors were broad for moving cargo, grates underfoot and green indented wall panels on either side. There was still power to the settlement, evidenced in long strips of lighting overhead and on either side of the walkway.

There was no sign of damage from conflict, but this was a storage area. An attack would have had greater impact on the bridge, mess, quarters. Even the mining processors, where people worked during the day, or in agricultural zones like the field outside or the internal gardens.

 _Parrish_. Where _was_ he?

 

 

 

The Corpsmen carried motion trackers and heat scanners, and Kavinsky swiftly located two of his other teams before encountering Proko or Carruthers.

‘Sarge.’ That was Whitman, shaking his head. ‘We swept the whole section. Nothing but dust.’

‘Go after Skov.’ Kavinsky directed. He paused, frowning, and Whitman hesitated too, both of them listening to something over comms.

Kavinsky didn’t reply to the message, but he curled a lip and swore.

Ronan wasn’t willing to wait. He’d already started down the corridor, navigating blindly further into the ship, when Kavinsky caught up with him.

‘All ship entrances were barricaded.’ He related blithely. ‘So the SO’s probably still inside. Might be dead, though.’

Ronan clenched his teeth, and ground out; ‘Whelk?’

‘Wants to regroup.’ Kavinsky sneered. ‘Pussy.’

The motion tracker blipped cheerfully, and Kavinsky cut across another corridor intersection and dragged up his rifle. The torch attached to the stock lit up, illuminating the corridor ahead, and Ronan realised the lights were damaged. Most were smashed. Several were flickering unpleasantly. There was structural damage too, metal warped from the walls, chunks of debris hanging from the ceiling.

Kavinsky hummed. ‘That’s more like it.’

A distant flash of movement had Ronan reaching reflexively for his rifle.

‘Prokopenko.’ Kavinsky whistled, and the Corporal turned. ‘The fuck happened?’

‘He fell in a hole, Sarge.’ Proko shrugged. He looked unbothered by the event and his shredded surroundings, but he also looked conspicuously wasted. ‘Grate gave way and dropped him.’

‘And you just fucked off?’ Ronan hissed, seizing the front of his jacket. _Goddamn fucking soldiers_.

‘There’s nothing down there.’ Proko looked unimpressed. ‘What’s under a fucking settlement ship?’

Ronan shook him, violently, and Proko tried to shove him off. ‘Something, you fuckweasel. Where did he go?’

He shrugged again. ‘Deep hole, man.’

Ronan didn’t need to check to know that Kavinsky was grinning.

‘What section is this?’ He demanded, and when Proko shrugged a third time he nearly punched him.

Kavinsky had raised his hand again. ‘Synth found a console and a floorplan.’ He jerked his chin at Proko. ‘Where’d he drop?’

 

 

 

It was the worst hit area they’d seen so far. There was pockmarked metal down the walls on either side, wherever chunks hadn’t been blown out completely. Huge pieces of floor grate, pipes, and metal foundation were already missing, and barely any lighting had survived, so the deepest they could see into one of the pits was a few feet before it became swirling void.

Parrish, avoiding the other traps, had stood on a piece of floor not yet fully detached, and he’d gone straight through.

‘Nothing down there.’ Proko reasserted smugly, and Ronan tried to break his nose.

Kavinsky used the strap of his rifle to haul him back, tone mocking. ‘Shit, Lynch, let it go.’

Whelk reached them quickly, with Noah’s guidance. He was unexpectedly alarmed at the loss of Parrish, but he made no attempt to reprimand Kavinsky or the Corporal.

Noah was distraught.

Helen looked from Ronan’s face to Kavinsky and back again, her features tightening fractionally in displeasure, but she waited for Ronan’s dismissive gesture. She knew he could (and would) take care of himself. Finding Adam was the priority.

It would have been Gansey’s priority.

 _They should have stayed on the ship_. Ronan should have made them stay on the ship.

‘What did this?’ Whelk inquired uneasily, inspecting the walls. His regrouping - Jiang and Rutherford, Helen and Noah, Proko and Kavinsky, and Ronan - made them a larger, less coordinated group. Ronan just wanted to go, to find Parrish. He considered jumping in the hole, but Proko had casually informed him that Parrish had yelped on the way down and then gone silent, and his insides had tightened painfully.

‘Explosives.’ Rutherford observed. ‘Plasma.’ He knelt, curious and somehow coherent. ‘Looks like acid, too. All this here has just been eaten away. The whole floor could be unstable.’

‘What’s underneath?’ Ronan repeated, furiously.

‘There are living quarters nearby.’ Noah explained unhappily. ‘I think it may be some kind of waste disposal trench.’

Jiang sniggered. ‘He fell into the sewer?’

Helen snagged Ronan’s arm as he drew it back.

Noah frowned. ‘There are no facilities nearby. I believe it’s more likely to be a garbage trench.’

‘He fell into the trash!?’

Ronan seethed, but Helen was still holding his elbow; ‘Drop a goddamn light.’

‘No.’ Noah reached out imploringly. ‘If there is decomposing material down there, it may be flammable.’

_Fuck, fuck, no._

‘How do we get him out?’ Ronan growled.

‘Carruthers went to find a way down there.’ Proko reported offhandedly. ‘Don’t lose your shit.’

Ronan snarled at him. ‘You piece of-’

Gunfire crackled in the distance, and Ronan swung the rifle off his shoulder.

Kavinsky was already sprinting, Proko a couple steps behind him, like hounds on a scent, zigzagging around jagged pieces of the ship and the gaping floor.

They disappeared out of sight around a corner, and as Ronan skidded around after them, there was a splintering sound, and a figure dropped from several feet in the air into a pile on the ground a few yards away.

Parrish. _Adam_.

There was a flicker of movement, a massive form shifting in the shadows further down the corridor, and Proko and Kavinsky both opened fire. They stepped over the crumpled figure, torchlight piercing the gloom beyond, and Ronan realised, with broken relief, that Parrish was alive.

He was close, curled into one of the recesses in the wall, covering his ears from the deafening plasma battery. The body, clearly armoured, had fallen just a couple feet from his boots.

Ronan stepped in front of him, rifle raised, but the creature had vanished into the dark. Proko lowered his gun unwillingly, and swivelled back towards them.

‘Fuck. Look what that bastard did to Carruthers, man.’

Kavinsky slowly relinquished his focus on the corridor.

He whistled. ‘You seeing this, Lynch? Took half his face off.’

Ronan would’ve guessed as much, even without looking. There was blood and something that strongly resembled chunks of watermelon on Adam’s face, and the front of his spacesuit. He hadn’t acknowledged Ronan, or the others. His gaze was fixed on Carruthers’ body, mouth pressed into a thin line.

Rutherford and Jiang rounded the corner, weapons raised, followed by Helen and Noah and flanked by Whelk. Helen interpreted the scene first, and she was quick to approach Carruthers, but quicker to grasp that there was nothing she could do.

She turned to Adam instead, and crouched next to him.

‘That’s a big fucking bug.’ Proko said sharply, sweeping the length of the corridor with torchlight to find some trace of the alien. ‘How the hell’d we miss it?’

Helen conjured a cloth from a pocket, and wiped the side of Adam’s face firmly. Ronan knew he would’ve hated it, hated anyone doing that, but he didn’t protest. Parrish might have been stubborn, but he wasn’t stupid enough to argue with Helen.

‘Adam?’ She tugged his hands from his ears.

Kavinsky managed to refocus on him. ‘Ask him what he saw.’

Helen shot him a withering glare. She said to Parrish; ‘You’re bleeding, what happened?’

Kavinsky lifted his rifle and Adam winced as the torchlight struck his face. There was fresh blood that Helen had mostly wiped away, but another layer that had stuck, dried onto his forehead and cheek.

Kavinsky made a low noise of amusement. ‘You’re shitting me.’ He moved closer, shoving Ronan with one shoulder. ‘I thought he was a robot.’

Some part of Ronan’s chest gave way to a confused mixture of anger and gratitude. Parrish hadn’t registered on Kavinsky’s radar at all, if he’d assumed Adam was another synthetic. Now that buffer was gone.

Kavinsky’s dead soldier lay unheeded on the floor behind him. He made a motion with the rifle, over Helen’s shoulder, towards Parrish. ‘What’d you see, dickweed?’

Ronan hit the gun with the palm of his hand, knocking the barrel and the torchlight away. ‘Fuck off, K.’

‘It’s tall.’ Adam’s voice was a rasp. He cleared his throat. ‘Seven feet at least. Bipedal. Some kind of… exoskeleton. Armoured, maybe. Long headed, like a reptile. It didn’t have a heat signature.’

Kavinsky looked undeterred. He was still standing uncomfortably close, but at least Ronan could keep the rifle away from Parrish and Helen.

‘Armoured?’ He repeated. ‘Was Carruthers using plasma?’

Parrish looked sideways, uncertain, and Prokopenko kicked something on the floor. ‘Pistol, Sarge. Rifle’s still strapped up.’

‘Take it.’ Kavinsky instructed coolly. ‘What was the weapon?’

Parrish looked at him blankly, and Ronan raised an arm to prevent Kavinsky’s attempted step forward.

‘Son of a bitch picked him up and shot him with something.’ Proko insisted, glaring at Adam suspiciously.

Jiang had wandered closer, and nudged Carruthers distastefully with the toe of his boot. Helen looked disgusted. Noah looked sick.

Parrish shook his head, two small jerks. ‘It caught him with something. An arm, maybe. I didn’t see a weapon.’

‘Fucking useless.’ Proko jabbed a finger at him.

Ronan moved to lunge at him, but Kavinsky was in the way, grabbing his shoulders. ’Easy, Lynch, keep it in your pants. Alright, get the others. We’re gonna seal the exit and hunt that motherfucker down.’


	5. The wrong kind of chemistry

Kavinsky left Lee posted at the remnants of the airlock, and the rest of them moved forward, deeper into the ship. Whelk maintained that they might locate survivors - clearly the colonists had put up a fight - so he insisted that Helen and Noah should stay with the team. Ronan wouldn’t leave them with Kavinsky, and he wouldn’t send Parrish back to the ship alone, so they all carried on.

He listened to Parrish explaining, quietly, that he’d climbed towards the light, and eventually Carruthers had dragged him out of a hole, they’d been ambushed by the alien, and Carruthers had opened fire and swiftly been dispatched. Adam was still unsteady, and Noah loyally remained at his side as they proceeded.

It wasn’t the first time they’d encountered aliens. It wasn’t the first time a mission had been dangerous. And it was unlikely this was the first time Parrish had witnessed a brutal killing, although Ronan wasn’t finding that particularly reassuring.

Instead of his crewmates, Ronan watched the walls, increasingly pockmarked and gouged, and the floor, and the barricaded and damaged doorways. Quarters were badly hit, as expected. Possibly the alien had struck at night, and colonists had been forced to hide in their rooms. There were no heat signatures, and no motion, so Kavinsky didn’t waste time on tearing down the blockades to search.

The closer they got to the original bridge, the less light they had. Fittings were broken, but the cables were also torn out of the walls, ripped and severed. They relied on torchlight, sweeping around them from the soldiers in front, and the soldiers behind.

Ronan was shoulder to shoulder with Kavinsky up ahead, tasting adrenaline on his tongue. It felt like an admission of guilt, of belonging, but he ignored it. He wanted to keep the others behind him, surrounded by the pack. He was more than willing to shoot anything hostile coming out of the darkness. And he needed Kavinsky’s attention to stay on him, at least as much as on the alien threat. He wouldn’t risk Kavinsky’s unpredictable vitriol falling on the others.

In the Corps, they’d been a team. Partnered more often than not by necessity, because even the nutcases trying to join up couldn’t handle Kavinsky. Ronan could. Most people assumed that Ronan was just more resilient, and maybe he was. Some people thought Ronan had a way of managing Kavinsky, like a badly-behaved dog, and maybe he did.

When Gansey had joined, it had taken a while to readjust.

Kavinsky hated him, and Ronan had wanted to. But Gansey was so careful about his approach to the Corps. He’d never committed to the principles espoused by the military. He’d wanted to do something ‘good’. And Ronan wanted to mock him for it, but there had never been anyone quite so disarmingly sincere. It reminded him of Matthew.

And Gansey had always disregarded Ronan’s reputation, even his behaviour. Gansey just wanted to talk about the universe, travelling, exploring.

And Ronan had wanted to listen. Then he’d wanted to go.

He vaguely assumed Kavinsky’s hatred was emblematic of some fundamental moral disagreement between his personality and Gansey’s, and gradually it had absorbed Ronan, too.

Ronan hadn’t been the one Kavinsky had tried to kill, though.

One of the corridors had been sealed, and the mechanism broken, so they were forced to take a detour through the mess to get to the bridge.

’Are you seeing this?’ Someone, possibly Skov, moved the beam of his torch across their path. The walls were closer, Ronan noticed, and oddly symmetrical, too, like the conflict had marked them in repeated patterns. Ronan pulled Kavinsky’s gun over enough to see the wall clearly.

It wasn’t metal, that was certain. More like gradually eroded stone, like the inside of a cave. Slightly damp, as though it was seeping moisture.

Someone else said; ‘What the fuck?’

There was a t-junction ahead, where access to the kitchen and mess were separated by an intervening corridor, and Ronan could already sense Kavinsky considering the most satisfying way of splitting the team. Trying to get one of Gansey’s crew alone, again, to do them harm.

Ronan didn’t have a scanner, either, but he recognised the soft blip of Kavinsky’s motion tracker. Kavinsky held up a hand, and the group slowly halted.

Proko, on Kavinsky’s other side, signalled confirmation, and beyond him, Skov gestured. Motion to the right, heat signatures to the left.

Kavinsky swung around. ‘No heat signatures, huh?’

Parrish replied quietly; ‘No.’

‘He sure?’ That was Jiang, somewhere in the gloom behind them. ‘I’m not trusting some asshole civilian.’

‘Don’t be a little bitch.’ Kavinsky answered.

‘Scared of a fight, Jiang?’ Ronan added malevolently.

Kavinsky’s grin was visible even in the dark. ‘Whelk, take your team left. Whitman, go with them.’

Ronan felt a flicker of frustration, that grew into a solid lump of unease as he realised Parrish hadn’t been assigned to the rescue group. If Kavinsky thought Ronan would risk them splitting up again…

He hissed; ‘I’m staying with my people.’

Kavinsky smiled, and Ronan knew instantly that he’d misstepped.

‘This is my territory, Lynch. You have no authority down here. You’ll all do what you’re told-’ Kavinsky shouldered his rifle, and tugged mockingly at the gunstrap across Ronan’s chest. ‘-or we’ll leave you behind.’

His tone, easy and amused, was open confirmation that he’d take any opportunity he found to put them at risk.

Ronan seized a handful of Kavinsky’s collar above his chest plate, and Helen said warningly; ‘ _Ronan_.’

‘That’s enough.’ Whelk ordered. ‘We have ground to cover. Go now.’

Ronan let go, but he watched Kavinsky move away, followed by Proko, sneering, and the two corporals. He checked his own weapon, and fell in behind Parrish as their group turned down the corridor to the right.

Jiang led the group to the left, Noah raising a hand weakly as Ronan watched them disappear in the opposite direction.

There was still motion being picked up on the tracker, but Proko indicated that it was moving, steadily, away from them. ‘One target. No heat.’

The tension thickened, not helped by the sudden and unnatural silence that fell over them. They navigated slowly, unexpectedly quietly, with their torch beams held low. Ronan could hear the soldier behind him holding his rifle so tightly it trembled. He leaned his own gun on one hip, and touched Parrish’s back with his free hand, just enough pressure to reassure… himself more than Adam, probably.

It wasn’t much, given the layers of fabric and insulation separating Ronan’s skin from Adam’s, but it was a comfort.

‘It’s fucking hot.’ Someone whispered, in front of them.

Adam shifted, possibly a reaction to the person ahead (was that Skov? or Swan? Ronan couldn’t remember), possibly just to press back against Ronan slightly.

‘It’s gone.’ Proko observed suddenly.

‘Out of range?’

’Just stopped. Sixty feet.’

‘Watch it. If it turns around we better fucking hear about it.’ Kavinsky had come to a halt.

The mess door didn’t look barricaded. In fact, it didn’t even look like a door. It was more reminiscent of a curving archway of granite, dark and damp. There was absolutely no light at this end of the corridor, or spilling out from the large, cavernous room beyond the arch, but it was stiflingly hot. Ronan wondered if the weird shit covering the walls was preventing the air circulation system from working. Parrish would probably know, but Ronan wasn’t going to ask.

Kavinsky was talking tactics. He and Proko in lead, Swan and Skov to the left, Ronan and Engle (the soldier flanking them, with about as much unwillingness as a person was capable of expressing) to the right. At thirty feet Proko, Swan and Engle would throw flares, and they’d destroy anything that moved.

Ronan grunted agreement, but he didn’t move his hand from Adam’s spine.

Under the sound of Kavinsky’s instructions, Parrish murmured; ‘This is a bad idea.’

‘Very discerning.’ Ronan muttered back.

‘Motion trackers only work when targets _move_.’

Ronan was on the verge of a scathing response when he understood.

Parrish thought it was a trap. Parrish thought it was a goddamn _trap_.

He made antidotes and food sources out of scrounged materials during planetary explorations. He identified potential threats or risks easily twenty minutes before everyone else. He’d saved Ronan’s life when the space station Penelope 801 had collapsed, by disregarding both Gansey and Ronan’s arguments and following his own calculations for an emergency FTL launch between debris. Adam was never wrong. It was like a clause in his contract.

It was plain stupidity to ignore his advice, but…

Ronan looked forward, to where Kavinsky’s face hovered wraith-like in the dark. Not fully lit, not entirely visible.

If Ronan so much as breathed an argument, Kavinsky would send him in first.

Worse, and more likely, he’d send Parrish. _You think it’s a trap? Go in and prove it_.

Kavinsky lifted a hand for silence, and then moved, weapon raised, through the arch into total blackness, Proko at his side. Swan and Skov followed, advancing to the left.

Ronan slipped past Parrish’s shoulder. Engle came up on his right, and Parrish shadowed him on the left, close enough to be just audible, over the sound of military boots and rustling armour.

It was dark, _jesus fuck_ , it was dark.

Ronan kept his weapon low, but ready, and resisted the urge to reach back for Adam’s hand.

They’d be in the middle of the room before they even saw what they were walking into. Ronan barely had any light to negotiate around the long metal tables and metal chairs. He could see Engle’s torchlight dusting over things - cutlery, metal trays, rotted food - and the lights of the others further away, passing over the same scene.

 _Interrupted during a meal?_ Ronan considered. How fast could one alien attack?

Not just one alien. Adam must have realised that immediately. One wouldn’t have survived this amount of resistance, obviously.

And if there wasn’t just one, why were they only seeing one? More than that, where would one go if it was being attacked?

Ronan hesitated, long enough to allow Parrish to catch up. They were both navigating entirely in the dark, and he felt Adam’s outstretched hand brush his elbow first, searching for obstacles, and then curl around his arm. Engle was just a few feet away, close to the wall.

Where were they? Twenty feet in, maybe. The darkness had closed around them. Ronan wished they’d throw the damn flares. He hated the silence, the sound of footsteps crunching, his inability to see Parrish.

If Gansey were here, he would have put a stop to this. He would have made it so, the way he did. He would have gotten Adam out of danger.

Engle stopped moving (Ronan thought) and Parrish withdrew his hand. There wasn’t anywhere to run, Ronan realised. Nowhere to hide. The walls seemed to have the same rippled surface of the corridors, the same oppressive atmosphere.

On the other side of the room, something went bright, and Ronan squinted through aching retinas to scan the room.

Proko lit another flare, and tossed it. They produced little orbs of stunning light, but thickened the worse shadows, under tables, in the distance, in the indented walls. The walls were the same, smooth and sloped, dark and slimy. Even the floor, under Ronan’s boots, was coated with sticky grime. Ronan glanced over his shoulder, hearing Engle’s flare fizz and catch.

Adam looked back at him, eyes darkened, face shadowed along fine edges and deep cheeks. His expression was a warning, but Ronan couldn’t ask.

He saw the rope drop from the ceiling behind Engle, and after a moment he realised it wasn’t a rope.

He swung the rifle up, but the rope was already twisting around Engle’s throat.

Ronan lunged for Parrish, as Engle found the trigger on his rifle. Ronan could have told anyone this was going to happen. The kid was a nervous wreck.

Plasma slammed into every surface around them, burning chunks out of the tables and chairs. Somebody howled from the other side of the room, and then there was nothing but gunfire. Ronan had caught Adam’s shoulders and dragged him down, but he rolled onto his knees, pulled up his rifle, trying to find an angle.

The thing was on the roof, still half hidden. Massive, like Adam had said, with a long head, like a gleaming silver shell, and bony from the neck to the end of the dangling snake tail.

It hadn’t killed Engle yet. He was still shooting, but he was finally wrestling the barrel up, and Ronan couldn’t get a clean shot.

Adam had crawled under the table. Ronan could feel fingertips grazing the back of his shoulder, trying to get his attention, pull him back.

Engle shot the alien in the head.

It didn’t let go, _fuck_ , it didn’t let go.

But it screeched like a tortured thing, and dripped yellow, murky blood, splattering on Engle’s head and shoulders, burning through his armour, his skin, searing through his flesh and making him scream, a high, horrifying sound over the vibrating blast of plasma continuing behind them.

The blood - acid? - dripped on an overturned chair, and began to eat through it.

Some of it dripped onto Ronan.

He dropped the gun.


	6. Are we food?

It wouldn’t help. He knew it wouldn’t, the second he realised there was acid falling, but he tried swiping it with his glove anyway. The heat was intense, like a chemical burn happening all at once, before it had even reached his skin.

He couldn’t hear the gunfire anymore, only his heart beating, the ragged sound of his own breathing.

Adam was there, so suddenly and so close Ronan didn’t have time to process it, and then he was peeling the suit aside in two halves like some kind of magic trick, and grabbing Ronan under the arms to haul him out of it.

Ronan thought; _there are more aliens. They’re still firing. More aliens_. Then, _Adam_. Because he was leaning over Ronan, pressing his hands to Ronan’s stomach through his singlet, and _was he dying? Was he dying and he hadn’t noticed because Adam was touching him? because christ almighty, that was how he’d want to die_.

His hands were bare, skidding on the sticky floor, and his arms, and he was wearing little more than underwear and undersuit leggings.

_Not ideal, given the circumstances._

But he’d prefer that to death, for the moment.

He looked up, finally, to Adam’s face, and Adam looked back.

It seemed to hit him abruptly that Ronan wasn’t dead, and he rocked onto his heels, pulling his hands away and inspecting Ronan’s shirt with faint surprise.

There was still noise, shooting and yelling, and the large, grey-black dead thing on the floor. What was left of Engle. The deep pockets in the dark surface of the ceiling, and the things moving… more of them, curling out of their hiding places, crawling across upside down like immense misshapen cockroaches. The silvery domed heads, and teeth, fucking hell, were those _teeth_?

Kavinsky’s dogs had gotten the message, and were firing upwards, incessantly, blowing holes in the aliens and showering the majority of the room in acid. Ronan couldn’t breathe for watching, but it felt like he was stuck in a simulation, something gratuitously gory and terrifying and unreal.

Adam had dragged him away from the aliens, into a niche in the wall substance. It was foul, but it felt safer. The angle prevented him from seeing any of the soldiers. He wondered if others were already dead. He wondered about Kavinsky.

He could see that three more aliens had been killed… they’d dropped onto the tables and the floor. There were more still moving, but he couldn’t pinpoint exactly how many, because they were converging on the side of the room where the Corpsmen were, tangled up together in an indistinct bunch of limbs and tails and heads.

They fell, one by one, turning grey and yellow. Going still.

Ronan could hear the guns even after they’d stopped. He felt as though he’d never stop hearing them. He wondered what the aliens were… if they were like people, with thoughts and personalities. He wondered if any of the colonists had survived. He wondered if Adam was okay.

It didn’t seem as though Adam had realised it was over, for the moment. He was still close, tucked into the wall, head turned from the light.

‘Parrish.’ Ronan tried to sit up. ‘ _Parrish_.’

Adam looked up again, squinting at his mouth, and Ronan realised he couldn’t hear properly. _Fuck, please let it be temporary_.

He pointed over Adam’s shoulder, and eventually Parrish turned around.

He didn’t let Ronan move until he’d been poked in the side a couple of times, and even then it was reluctant. There were still shadowed areas, still hiding places above them. This could still be a trick… but if they didn’t at least try and run, they were guaranteed mincemeat.

Adam stood up first, using the wall for balance, and edged away. Ronan followed, movement easier from lack of the suit, but overtly conscious of the air pressing against his skin.

Kavinsky was a good distance away, maybe twenty feet, on the far side of the room and the far edge of the light from a flare. Proko had managed to survive too, although he didn’t seem particularly alive.

Ronan’s rifle was abandoned on the ground. He stooped to pick it up, avoiding the little chasms made by acid drops on the floor.

‘Lynch!’ _This was the worst day_.

This was a clear explanation for half the damage in the corridors. There were holes the size of beach balls in the grates where the dead aliens had fallen. The metal tables had collapsed into pieces, and whole chairs had disintegrated.

Ronan only looked up as Kavinsky got closer, and his voice clearer. ‘Fuckload of use you are.’

Kavinsky looked like he’d gone ten rounds with a bull on a water slide. His hair was plastered to his forehead, and his eyes were glowing, actually _glowing_ , like he was some kind of demonic entity.

Ronan wondered if he was an alien.

Kavinsky stopped, as Ronan came further into the light. Adam was nearby, but lingering at a safe distance from either of them, watchful of the edges of the room he couldn’t see clearly.

‘What the hell happened to you?’

Ronan raised both arms and looked down at himself, feigning confusion. ‘Huh.’

‘Acid.’ Skov spat, appearing in Ronan’s periphery. ‘You get burned?’

Slowly, Ronan shook his head. He hadn’t been burned, strangely. Adam had gotten him out of the suit fast enough, which seemed incredible, because those suits were designed to be nigh on indestructible.

‘Engle?’

Ronan pointed to the alien corpse on the floor behind him. He even felt something like remorse flicker, unbidden, across his face.

‘Motherfucker.’ Skov observed heavily.

Proko was on Kavinsky’s other side. He gestured darkly at something Ronan couldn’t see. ‘Swan’s gone too. Bastards.’

Kavinsky raised a hand to his ear. ‘Jiang, report. Corporal, report.’

Ronan felt sick dread rise to his throat. Helen and Noah. He motioned to Adam, who came closer, if only just to try and follow their conversation.

Kavinsky paused. ‘What?’ Proko and Skov were still holding weapons at the ready, scanning the room like Adam was, and Ronan hefted his rifle into one shoulder. ‘Bullshit.’

‘Jiang’s not picking up the phone.’ Kavinsky scoffed. ‘And Rutherford’s pissing himself.’

‘Fuck.’ Skov assessed sharply.

‘He’s got the MO, possible survivor. Let’s go round ‘em up.’

Adam came closer still, turning a curious gaze on Ronan. _Crew?_ He looked at Kavinsky, and back, unable to decipher his speech through the dim light.

Ronan answered. _Helen. Settlers. Trouble_.

He’d gotten close to grasping the syntax of Adam’s language (whatever it was called, Ronan didn’t know where it came from), but single signs were faster. And punchier.

_Alive?_

He curled his hands into fists.

 

 

 

They left the bodies - there was no hope of moving them, no point. Kavinsky’s eyes were pure crazy, but at least he’d stopped noticing Ronan. Proko and Skov followed him, silent but unafraid.

Ronan sent Parrish in front of him. He’d strapped up his old rifle, and carried Swan’s instead, with the torch attached. With one hand free, and the light, he could just manage a conversation.

_How?_

Parrish dug a narrow silver bolt from his pocket, turning it with remarkable dexterity between the thick fabric of his gloved fingers. Ronan didn’t recognise it until he turned it on. The laser scalpel, glowing red.

Part of him wanted to ask why Parrish had felt the need to bring it… impromptu dissection in the field taking his fancy?

Mostly he just knew it was Parrish’s good sense. Practicality, and thank fuck for it.

Ronan’s mind skittered back to Adam’s hands pressed to his stomach, his momentary, intense distress, and skittered away again with reflexive haste.

_Ok?_

Ronan wasn’t sure if Parrish was asking seriously or not (he could only see Adam’s profile), so he answered vaguely; _Not dead_.

He was alive. And Adam was alive. Now all he needed to do was get Helen and Noah, and get the hell off the planet. Kavinsky couldn’t keep them here, not with this threat. Ronan would leave the Corps behind in pieces before he let Kavinsky feed them to the goddamned aliens.

He asked; _Are we food?_

Adam glanced back at him, and Ronan clarified; _Food or enemy?_

Adam’s feather fine features were intent, thoughtful. _Food_. He paused, before adding. _No bodies_.

_Sheep bodies._

He nodded in response, cautious. _True_.

There were no human bodies, he was right. Not that they’d checked the barricaded rooms, or the corners of the mess. Possibly they were there, but… Ronan couldn’t smell anything dead.

He couldn’t be certain it was worse this way, without the stench of rotting flesh or the sight of corpses, but it still felt unpleasantly ominous.

The mess was connected to the kitchen by another corridor, that Proko surprisingly practically lit with another flare. There were no aliens hiding in the wall hollows, or crawling along the ceiling, but Ronan stayed close enough to Parrish to brush his elbow with every step.

They found the door to the kitchen, but approached more warily. It was still functional, so Kavinsky had to smash through the console to make it work, and this time they led with the flares. There was nothing on the motion trackers, but there were heat signatures. Two, four, possibly even six, but Skov reported interference, without hazarding a guess at what might have caused it.

Kavinsky hissed; ‘Eyes up.’

And they advanced.

The kitchen was worse than the mess, but there was more light, from other flares quarter-way through the vast room, and some functional overhead strips. The space was broken by huge square pillars, cryostores and hydration tanks, so every step carried the risk of an unexpected attack. Ronan was watching the ceiling, initially, so he didn’t notice the uneven floor surface until his boot snagged on something. He felt a stab of alarm at the sight of more twisting, winding cords across the ground, but they didn’t appear to be attached to anything gigantic and deadly. Instead they bore a disturbing resemblance to entrails, stretched intestines trailing across the grates, tangled around the bases of strange, fleshy ovoids.

Adam’s hand nudged his, and Ronan looked up from his careful navigation of the alien debris. Kavinsky’s dogs hadn’t stopped, but in a little sphere of light up ahead Ronan could just see the top of Helen’s head, chestnut brown hair, curved forward.

Ronan jerked forward instinctively, and Adam followed.

She was kneeling, in amongst the strange alien shapes, and when she was finally in full view Ronan’s relief caught in his throat.

She seemed unharmed. Her suit was intact, and she lifted her gaze to them.

Rutherford was standing behind her, gun sweeping in arcs around his charges, and there was a man curled up on her right, a heaving mass of sobbing and unintelligible gasps.

And Noah…

Noah was on the floor.

He was crouched over himself, just in front of Helen. Her gloved hands rested lightly on the back of his suit, below the seal around his neck.

Adam stopped, but Ronan didn’t. He touched the back of Noah’s neck, searching for a sensation he knew Noah wouldn’t provide. He wasn’t warm (he was never warm), and he didn’t have a heartbeat, and his skin didn’t shiver in reaction to contact.

But Noah moved, straightening up until they could see his face. Ronan hissed.

His skin was melted in patches, revealing sunken pits of white liquid and strands of fibrous wiring. There were flashes of metal visible amongst the worst of it. Ronan sank onto his haunches, carefully moving his hand to what was left of Noah’s chin.

‘Noah?’ It came out guttural and pleading, but Ronan hardly cared.

Noah moved his mouth, soundlessly, lips white and uneven.

‘Get up, we’re moving.’ Kavinsky snarled.

Ronan’s response was halfway out of his mouth, but Helen had started to stand. ‘He’s right.’ Her eyes were large, shadowed. ‘We found the colonists.’

Ronan stood, pulling Noah with him. He had to know if Noah was badly damaged, what they needed to do to help him, but he couldn’t stop himself glancing at the figure still bawling on the floor. Was only one alive? Was _he_ even alive?

‘What the shit are these?’ Skov gestured towards the strange objects on the ground, leaning over to inspect what was inside, and Rutherford growled a warning.

‘Eggs, man.’

‘The fuck?’ Skov pulled back, and Proko and Kavinsky both turned their weapons uneasily towards the new threat. ‘That’s rank.’

Rutherford looked haunted. ‘That’s nothing. They’re fucking bugs, man. Motherfucking face fuckers.’

‘They come outta these things?’

Rutherford grimaced, but he didn’t offer an explanation. 

‘They’re parasites, of some kind.’ Helen’s normally unwavering voice held a note of distress. ‘They latch onto the face, and coil a tail around the throat.’

‘The face?’ Proko recoiled.

Ronan stared at Noah’s wide, fragile eyes, and suppressed a curse.

’We were… attacked by one.’ Helen continued. ‘Noah stabbed it. It bled- It _sprayed_ acid.’

Something brushed Ronan’s shoulder. Adam, coming closer to catch up on the conversation. He examined each of Noah’s hands and asked; _Hurting you?_

Kavinsky said coolly; ‘Colonists are dead?’

Noah replied; _No. Strange but not pain._

_Your NPU?_

‘Not all of ‘em.’ Rutherford shuddered. ‘They have these fuckers stuck on their faces, but it’s like they’re still alive.’

_Intact. Secondary processors sustained damage._

_We will fix it._

‘Whelk?’ Kavinsky asked.

‘Man, fuck Whelk. He’s an asshole, and I’m not waiting.’ Proko argued.

‘Jiang and Whitman were with him.’ Rutherford confessed lowly. ‘They went after something on the motion tracker.’

There was a brief, uneasy silence. Ronan didn’t know how deep loyalties ran in the pack - clearly Carruthers had been of little interest to Kavinsky - but even Proko looked uncertain about the prospect of abandoning two more soldiers.

Helen was observing Ronan’s suitlessness in constricted silence, and examining his bruised face with concern, but she didn’t protest when Kavinsky instructed them to move out.

Something struck the back of Ronan’s shoulder. ‘Get him up.’

Entrusting support of Noah to Parrish, Ronan tried to haul the colonist off the ground.

Helen attempted to help, but the man fought them off with some noise akin to wail. It sounded less like fear than overwhelming despair.

Clutching one of his arms, Helen tried whispering reassurance. He merely whimpered in response, until it broke to a gravelly wheeze.

Kavinsky was moving on ahead, back through the kitchen to find what was left of Whelk and the others, but there were only seconds until the wheeze worsened to a cough, a hoarse choke.

‘Hey.’ Helen sought his focus, while Ronan kept trying to pull them forward. ‘Breathe. We’re getting you out of here.’

The colonist didn’t answer. Ronan was losing his footing, dragged down by the weight of him, the interminable shudder in his shoulders. His face was lean, grief-stricken, but his eyes found Helen’s face, like moths to a light.

He shoved her, and she tripped over an egg and fell backwards.

Ronan cursed and lunged for her, pushing the colonist aside.

She landed on her backside, eyes round, but didn’t seem hurt. The colonist tipped back too, still raggedly gasping, and fell to the ground.

‘The fuck are you doing?’ Skov, closer to them, had swivelled back, struggling to aim his rifle past Ronan at the figure now convulsing on the ground.

Ronan pulled Helen to her feet and a few steps away, out of the flare light and out of reach, into the heavy, sticky darkness. The colonist twisted in a violent seizure, there was the sickening but unmistakable crunch of bone, and the front of his shirt darkened with moisture.

Rutherford hissed; ’ _Christ_ , is that-’

Something tore out of the colonist’s chest in a burst of blood and flesh. Skov swore loudly, and Ronan felt Helen’s fingers tighten reflexively on his arm.

Noah had signalled to Parrish that something was happening, and he stumbled beyond Skov, unbalanced by Noah’s weight and withdrawing in alarm.

The colonist’s body twitched, jerked and slumped. The… _thing_ … protruding from his chest moved, a blood soaked, screeching head the length of Ronan’s forearm, glinting with silver teeth.

Skov, frozen, whispered; ‘Fucking _fuck_.’

Proko shouldered past him and opened fire.

The first blast of plasma might have done for the thing, but Proko kept shooting until he must have emptied half a clip, and even Skov was reeling from the noise.

There wasn’t much left of the colonist, and Ronan realised Helen’s fingernails were digging into his bare arm, the only demonstration of her distress. Her expression was fixed in dispassionate practicality.

The silence was punctured by the nonexistent echo of gunfire, but Ronan could tell nobody was moving. Something else was replacing alarm, panic… a slow-settling, bone-deep sense of desperation. Battlefield instincts.

He checked for Parrish and Noah, and pulled Helen forward, setting his jaw.


	7. Solatium

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lovely creatures; I do enjoy all your comments very much, but do not feel obliged to comment if you don't feel like it/want to/have the energy/etc. I promise I have no expectations of you. I deeply appreciate (*cough* love *cough*) you all already and the story is a mostly gratuitous exercise, so I entreat you to enjoy with great tranquillity.

They passed the rest of the colonists. This part of the room was still sunken in gloom, and Ronan kept stumbling, unaided by Helen’s cautious presence at his side. He barely registered that she was preventing him from drawing too close to the walls, until someone up ahead snarled a few swear words and the group staggered to a halt.

Torchlight flickered over bodies, upright but immobile, held in place by repellant, resinous cocoons. Several of the heads drooped forward, weighed down by motionless but disturbing yellow-brown bodies - aliens that resembled gigantic, bloodsucking ticks. Other faces were visible, alien free, but the humans were unquestionably dead, glimpses of torn flesh and bent bone just visible below their necks.

Nothing moved, as they moved. The eggs were all open, and empty, the people were all dead or paralysed. Nothing seemed to stir in the darkness, but the tension built under Ronan’s skin until the hum of energy was unbearable.

Prokopenko hissed a warning, and the torchlight swung.

Light responded, two cautious beams from the opposite direction.

It had to be Jiang, Whitman and Whelk, but only two figures approached, both failing to lower their weapons until they were literally within arms reach. Kavinsky swung out a hand, and caught someone’s rifle.

‘Where the fuck have you been?’

Ronan could see his sneer, from several metres back. He could also see Jiang’s blank stare, and Whelk’s sharp examination of his remaining soldiers. There was no sign of Whitman.

‘Interference.’ Jiang answered dully. ‘Whitman got wasted.’

Kavinsky spat on the ground. Helen turned her head fractionally, her sombre gaze brushing Ronan’s face. He sought Adam and Noah again, reassuring himself. He just had to get them safely back to Gansey. That was all.

‘Did you make it to the bridge?’ Whelk demanded impatiently. ‘Did you find the survivors?’

‘They’re good as dead.’ Kavinsky drawled, indifferent. ‘Better to just bomb the whole fucking site.’

Whelk recoiled. ‘This is a _civilian_ colony.’

‘We can’t just leave them here.’ Helen protested, but even her horror was muted.

‘The colonists got massacred.’ Proko pointed out, with startling clarity. ‘Can’t help ‘em.’

‘We will be too, if we don’t get the fuck out.’ Rutherford added.

Whelk glowered, obviously displeased with the complete lack of respect he inspired among his troops, but said nothing.

‘Back this way.’ Kavinsky directed, shouldering past Whelk with ease. ‘Towards the ship.’

He commed Lee (to “see if one of these assholes could keep himself alive”) and they navigated out, around the corpses of two more aliens leaking acid into holes in the floor, and Whitman’s impaled body.

Ronan watched Noah’s feet, his still steady steps around obstacles, carefully timed to match Parrish’s less agile manoeuvring.

 

 

 

Henry was the reason they ended up finding Noah. He’d been an immediate favourite for both Ronan and Gansey. His previous crew had abandoned him for scrapping, due to a head injury, to an outer galaxy scrapyard on Gomi, where Henry had dragged them in search of another thermostatic expansion regulator.

Ronan climbed through old ship hulls and stole whatever he found mildly entertaining, while Gansey, being Gansey, pretended to make a respectable analysis of the massive yard of debris. He’d called Ronan over excitedly, and Ronan had sighed but obliged.

It was rare to find a synthetic intact after they’d been “rendered non-functional”. The parts were fairly rare, and always, always recycled into newer models.

Gansey had contemplated getting a new synthetic, but Ronan had always denounced the idea. He could pilot, Henry could engineer, and Gansey could work the (reasonably basic) computer system. There was no need for a robot, especially not one of the newer models, who would probably be more socially advanced than Ronan himself.

But there was Noah, lifeless, tucked in amongst an interminable mass of scrap. His youthful face, relatively small stature, and primarily the dented section of his face made him unusually endearing.

Ronan and Gansey had managed to carry him back to Ronan’s cruiser. The damage was concentrated to the side of his head, and Gansey was hopeful that Henry’s mystical powers of repair would have some effect, although Ronan had doubted it.

Nobody discarded a synthetic with any possibility of functionality, not least because they often had considerable hard drive caches on their prior crew and ship and activities.

Whether those might have survived, for Noah, with his extensive neural damage, they didn’t know.

It had taken months and even a surprising willingness to planet hop in the wealthier regions of the galaxies, but restoring Noah had become Gansey’s obsession, for a while, and they’d eventually managed it.

Ronan had helped Henry replace Noah’s head for the hundredth time. It had been like caring for a beloved, but comatose child for so long, he wasn’t sure he was prepared to have Noah wake up and shatter the illusion.

And then that beloved comatose child had actually woken up, and had somehow remained a beloved child.

Noah had a fractured recollection of what had come before. His visual processors had been damaged, so he automatically identified Gansey as his primary allegiance. It took several weeks for him to stop referring to Gansey as “Captain Normanby” or “Amelia”, but it looks months to stop Ronan from doing the same thing.

His memory of his crew, the ship and their mission was patchy, but occasionally he tried to trace the forgotten parts, repeating actions or conversations, substituting the occupants of the Henrietta for his previous crew.

He got attached fast, to Ronan’s amusement. He would loiter by Henry while he tinkered, and cheerfully passed him any required tools or objects. He followed Gansey with baffling enthusiasm, and listened wide-eyed to every story about the Henrietta’s earlier journeys. He even lingered with Ronan in the mess, or on the cruiser, or on the observation deck, or in Ronan’s room, asking him endless questions about his family, his childhood, and the Corps and accepting dubious training on the correct way to play cards and swindle fools in bars.

Ronan had known sentient synthetics his whole life. He’d never hesitated over their… convincingness. An AI could think independently, creatively. They could be programmed with emotional modifications, and structured for learning.

Some argued that they lacked souls, but Ronan had met plenty of people who were less human. He’d met plenty of synthetics he’d despised because of their personalities, and plenty he’d tolerated. His only resistance to them stemmed from the fact that they _did_ count as people, and people were inadvisable.

But Noah wasn’t just any person, and he wasn’t just any synth. He had modifications to his modifications to his modifications. He had neural patterning that had taken decades to form and function. And he was simply _good_.

Blue had adored Noah from the very second she’d met him, and the feeling had been mutual. When she’d joined the crew, the others had quickly lost time with their favoured companion. For an age he’d drifted after Blue all the minutes they were awake. He still talked to Gansey about their missions, helped Henry with repairs, and played card games with Ronan, but his loyalty was clearly with her.

Admittedly, Ronan had needed… longer… to adjust to a new crewmate, and Noah’s loyalty wavering as much as Gansey’s didn’t improve his mood. But Sargent was a bloody good pilot and she took Gansey about as seriously as a monkey in a top hat.

Noah had eased up on the enthusiasm after a while, mostly to allow Gansey his very awkward courting attempts. He’d also initiated Blue into most of the card games Ronan played, and she proved an impressively vicious opponent, which made up some of Ronan’s lost amusement.

And then, years and years later, Parrish. _Solatium_.

Not immediately.

Not when Parrish had helped Cheng develop an orbital scanner to locate the mineral deposits they were searching for. Not when Parrish had talked the Quirinus security contingent out of arresting Ronan for starting (technically for _finishing_ ) a fistfight on-station. Not even when that incident on Neuss had forced Ronan and Adam to scramble into the decontamination shower together… although that might have made a contribution.

It was later. After enough time (conscious) had passed to allow Ronan recognition that the rough edges of Parrish’s strange, heavy mask, weren’t really the edges at all. His facades weren’t light, fluid like Gansey’s (the child of a dynasty), practiced or easy. They seemed involuntary and burdensome, and limited to passivity and impassivity, with disconcerting implications.

Ronan had adjusted to the awareness that Adam was more like an extension of his impenetrability than something separate from it. He was dry, intensely focused, catastrophically intelligent, but he was also enigmatic, dispassionate, perpetually restrained.

But for Ronan, there was no ‘in spite of’ when it came to Parrish.

Frequently, excessive cryosleep had a detrimental impact on memory. There were solid gaps in Ronan’s recollections of home and the Corps and sometimes Gansey would have to remind him of that one planet with the mercury spring, or the one with the giant arthropods.

But he wasn’t sure there was a single thing about Adam goddamn Parrish that he _didn’t_ remember in excruciating detail.

 

 

 

They were passing back through the quarters, gradually moving into properly lit corridors with intact flooring, when Noah balked, stalling both Parrish and Ronan, who was still intently watching his heels. Helen stopped too, and Ronan felt her pulling him back automatically, caution overriding knowledge.

Noah was doing the same with Adam, almost discreetly, although the soldiers ahead hadn’t faltered.

Ronan caught flashes of the conversation. _What_ … _motion?_ … _sensors_ … _damage_. … _spreading_ (Or was that _big_?)

_In front?_

_Yes_. Strong _yes_.

Adam gestured behind himself, without looking back. _Systems failing ahead_.

Ronan nodded to Helen, and raised Swan’s rifle.

Noah was still edging back, guiding Parrish, and Ronan let them pass. Whelk was next up ahead, unaware of the distance slowly increasing between them and him, Rutherford, Skov, Prokopenko and Kavinsky.

Ronan heard something heavy fall in the distance, distinguishable from the persistent thud of his heartbeat against his ribcage. Whelk stopped in his tracks. Ronan occupied the middle of the corridor, praying they weren’t being pinned from both directions. The metal of Swan’s gun was cool against his arm and his neck, unexpected after the humid heat of the kitchen. He could feel sweat beading on his forehead, the back of his neck, curling down his spine.

Even Kavinsky had paused.

The others were still withdrawing, close to the walls. The exit was forward, and so was the cruiser, but they couldn’t risk it. Ronan couldn’t risk _them_.

Kavinsky fired first, and Ronan backed up immediately. There were some fights it was insanity not to run from.

 

Helen, who was inadvertently cast into the lead, diverted away from the kitchen and the path to the bridge. She sprinted around an early corner, and Noah followed, dragging Parrish at impressive speed despite his injuries and offering muffled instructions about where to turn next.

Ronan didn’t commit to turning the barrel of his weapon from the direction of the enemy until Proko shouted something and Whelk spun to flee, closely pursued by Jiang.

Ronan swore and ran, not stopping to swing the rifle over his shoulder.

Noah had overtaken Helen, caught her arm, and was dragging both her and Parrish along at a speed considerably faster than Ronan could match. He was, after all, tireless, but he was also disposed to be as aerodynamic as synthetically possible. Ronan didn’t know (he wasn’t interested in) how that worked mechanically… that was a matter for Parrish and Henry to fawn over in their spare hours. The point was he was efficient. Inhumanly efficient, if the lagging energy of his two captives was any indication.

Ronan only caught up when they hit a sealed section, and Noah relinquished his dual grip to grapple with the console.

Whelk was next to arrive at the end of the corridor, rapidly securing himself the relative safety of a wall niche and dragging Jiang in beside him as either a shield or an ally.

It only took seconds for Noah to get the door scraping open, but in that time the other three soldiers had reached them. Skov collided with Ronan’s shoulder, rolled off, seized Parrish and dragged him through the door. Noah, with considerably more delicacy, propelled Helen after them, while Jiang and Whelk scrambled through on the right. Ronan felt Noah’s cool, pockmarked fingers graze one arm, and then Kavinsky grabbed the front of his shirt. He had both arms thrown wide, one shoving Ronan over the threshold, the other holding his rifle extended at full length, still firing down the corridor, Proko at his side.

Ronan had the barest glimpse of numerous silver-grey domes in constant, slithering motion down the corridor, some crawling along the length of the ceiling, some the walls, and others on the floor, stooped low, scuttling like lizards.

He rarely doubted Adam’s observations, unless some amusement came of it, but he wouldn’t have assumed these were bipedal. Some kind of alternative, jurassic evolution, maybe, acid-blooded dinosaurs.

The door scraped closed, but within a heartbeat something had slammed against the far side, joined by another echoing thud, and another, and another.

Kavinsky released his shirt.

Ronan spared a moment to glance around. They’d made it into the vehicle hangar - it must have been Noah’s effort to guide them towards an exit. There were a dozen ATVs, and a few rovers of varying size, each framed in steel armour, outfitted with spotlights and heavy cargo storage. The broad hangar doors were sealed at the far end of the room, blurry through distance and bad light.

Whelk was already jogging in that direction, flanked by Jiang and shouting back for Noah’s assistance.

The internal door bent towards them, producing a sliver of a gap between the metal and the frame, and the remaining Corpsmen loosed a few plasma rounds as a few grey claws (or were they fingers?) curled round the edge. Noah was close, with the others, and they stayed, unfathomably, as a group, rapidly retreating across the broad slate floor with the soldiers in loose alignment behind them, weapons trained on the warping door.

Skov shouted a warning that Ronan didn’t catch, faltering and spinning towards the nearside wall. Adam marked him, indicating some moderate return of his hearing, and veered in the other direction with Helen and Noah in pursuit, disappearing past the line of secured ATVs.

Ronan would have followed, but he was conscious of the swift movement of the barrel of Skov’s gun, tracking motion behind the railings and the fuel tanks protruding in a line parallel to the wall.

He noted Skov’s tension, and lunged, knocking his aim off by several feet. Plasma sparked against the concrete and metal wall, searing black patches against yellow and green, and Skov cursed, wrestling free.

‘What the fuck, Lynch?’

The door buckled. Kavinsky reached them, but Proko had already gone after Parrish and Helen, threading his way around the ATVs.

‘Those tanks are giant explosives, you fucking moron.’ Kavinsky abused Skov cheerfully. ‘You wanna flame-roast yourself, do it on your own damn time.’

Skov sneered, but yielded his aim. ‘It’s heading for the hangar door.’

Metal screamed, and an alien made it through the door frame, forcing them to rapidly abandon their location.

The line of tanks concluded a couple hundred yards ahead, and Ronan watched, while running, for the hidden alien to appear at the end. It could intercept them, block them from reaching the hangar door, or it could continue forward and catch up to Whelk, unless Jiang put a round through it.

Again, Ronan prayed there was nothing coming from the other direction.

The rest of the door folded, sounding as though a portion of the frame and the wall splintered off with it, and something behind them produced an ungodly screech.

Ronan heard rather than saw some of them gaining purchase on the wall, probably the ceiling. The extra rifle was relatively light, but his own PCR was heavier, and bruising his back every time it rose and fell with the running. He already felt winded.

He saw a flicker of movement, the alien materialising close on the right, and Skov twitching the gun up to shoot at it, hesitating last second as the little thing slipped through the railings and dashed out in front of them.

Skov shouted; ’Wait!’ as Kavinsky pulled the trigger.

It was a _child_ , Ronan realised.

The gunshot was infuriatingly loud by Ronan’s ear, but they were already too close, and Kavinsky had overestimated its height, so the creature froze in sudden terror, unharmed as plasma shot over its head.

Ronan was within four feet of it. He wrenched the strap over his head and tossed Swan’s rifle, and blindly swung out to snatch the child from the ground as he sprinted past.

His chest was aching, from bruised and breathlessness, but thankfully the child was light. It crossed his mind, half-formed, instinctive concern that he was holding it too tight, crushing it, but if he didn’t, he would drop it. He couldn’t even tell if it was reacting to his grip.

Whelk had gotten to the hangar door, but the aliens were closing on them. Ronan wasn’t sure they’d reach it in time - even if they did, with the door open, the aliens would merely chase them outside, catch them before they made it to the cruiser.

Something behind them growled, low and steady, and Ronan felt the vibration through his boots.

The volume ratcheted up, and there was an accompanying series of thuds and the screech of the aliens, and something drew alongside them, easily matching their running speed.

It was a rover, one armoured door swinging wide. Proko was half balancing on the metal frame, arm outstretched, and Kavinsky emitted a loud and vicious word.

He grabbed the arm, and Proko swung him up onto the vehicle.

Ronan swerved closer, the rover decelerating jerkily in order to stay level with him. He couldn’t lift the child without slowing down - his lungs were starting to fail him - but Proko managed to get it, by one arm at least, and haul it bodily up and into the vehicle.

Ronan was next, Kavinsky seizing one arm and Prokopenko his elbow and both of them flinging him, untidily, head first through the door.

His chest made it, but he couldn’t find purchase with his feet at all, and clawed at the floor inside instead, until Noah’s fingers fastened around his arms and dragged him in properly.

A second later and Skov appeared, smacking into the doorframe and scrabbling his way inside.

Kavinsky joined them, and Proko slammed the door shut, enclosing them all in relative safety.

Ronan ascertained from an alarmed assessment that Helen was driving, but part of the front window had already given way, smoking liberally and disintegrating from the application of acid.

There was the child, digging herself into the furthest corner of the compartment. Noah was wedged next to Helen’s seat, and Adam was crouched behind it, eyeing the new entity with grave astonishment.

Ronan edged towards it cautiously. It looked young, five or six, perhaps, with ragged hair and a filthy complexion. It wouldn’t make eye contact, but he wasn’t sure he would be able to tell if it was a girl or a boy even if it did. He moved closer anyway, clutching for the net on the wall as the rover rattled over uneven ground.

Helen shouted something about the door - it was barricaded, Whelk hadn’t opened it - and the rover swerved, throwing most of them either into the wall or onto the floor. Ronan slid down onto his knees, nursing a fresh ache in his shoulder, and checked back at Adam levering himself upright, Skov wincing onto his hands and knees, and Kavinsky grinning like a maniac.

‘Can’t you ram it?’ Proko yelled, hurling open the door. Whelk scrambled in, glancing around in vaguely stunned distress, and Jiang climbed in after him.

‘It’s a reinforced _airlock_.’ Parrish returned scathingly.

Kavinsky shoved Proko for his attention, and gestured for the rocket launcher, as Jiang slammed the door shut and Helen slammed her foot onto the accelerator.

‘Do another lap.’ Kavinsky commanded, pulling Noah from his position. He squeezed forward himself, towards the opening created by the acid, and shoved the majority of the rocket launcher out the gap.

Distracted, Ronan barely noticed the little hand pulling on his shirt, digging at his ribcage like the child could burrow behind him. He lowered an arm, thoughtless with exhaustion, across its head and shoulder in an arc.

If they could make it to the cruiser, intact, possibly they could hold off the aliens long enough to launch.

Maybe there was no cruiser to reach…

There had been debris on the landing pad. No sign of any shuttle belonging to the colony. Maybe the aliens had destroyed that, one way or another. How intelligent were they? They’d laid a trap, and clearly they’d decimated the original population in a matter of months… They’d hunted isolated groups, although whether that was intentional or not it was difficult to say. 

Parrish would probably know.

Helen swerved around another corner, and Ronan clutched the small human closer.

She turned again, sharp enough for Ronan to feel the rover rock on its considerable suspension, and then Kavinsky was leaning forward, as much outside the vehicle as he was inside.

They were fucked. They were royally fucked.

He launched the rocket, angle high. Whelk looked sick with fear. Parrish’s grip on the safety bar next to him was tight enough to turn his knuckles white.

 

Ronan remembered the time they’d partnered for Barafu, and the search for inhabitants of the frozen wasteland, that had rapidly gone wrong in a myriad of petty, insignificant ways, culminating in a lonely stranding halfway down an icy cliff.

They’d huddled unusually close, for meagre warmth. Parrish had said flatly, through blue lips. ‘This wind will kill us in under an hour.’

Ronan had shrugged, more like a twitch than a gesture. ‘It’s not a bad way to die.’

Adam had raised one dubious eyebrow, visible only by the icicles just barely clinging to his fair hair. ‘Freezing to death?’

‘Exploring the universe.’Ronan corrected, refusing to allow his teeth to chatter.

Parrish had smiled, faintly. It was always faint, when he smiled, and nearly always limited to inappropriate moments of danger or blisteringly wry humour.

This felt like a moment of both.

He’d conceded; ‘There are worse ways to die.’


	8. Hahaha, trauma.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um I added a few new tags just for safety's sake. This chapter and beyond. Kinda spoilery but it's cliches from here on out anyway so don't worry :P

The rocket must have struck the door. Ronan couldn’t see, but he trusted Kavinsky’s aim, if nothing else about him. The shockwave hit the car, and Helen wrestled with the steering wheel, flinging the occupants of the rear compartment from side to side.

She didn’t seem convinced that the explosion had cleared a path, but Kavinsky was goading her to accelerate, to collide with the remnants at full speed.

Everyone crouched down, half with rabbit-eyed fear, half with bitter relief - at least their deaths wouldn’t be directly at the teeth and claws of the aliens. Ronan pulled the child onto his leg, bracing it off the floor.

Gansey was going to be so pissed at him for dying.

The rover hit the door. Kavinsky shielded his head, cursing, as the rest of the windscreen shattered and folded in, and Helen wrenched the wheel. Ronan was certain he felt the car lift onto two wheels as Helen fought for control, her expression fixed in grim determination.

The rover slid from rough metal onto compacted earth.

Kavinsky was hauling himself upright, and Helen, to Ronan’s admiration, shoved him aside.

‘Noah? I need-’ She sought his face, and summoned him back to her side. ‘Do you have an idea how to get back to the cruiser?’

His answer was muffled, but the rover pitched left.

The Corpsmen were securing their weaponry, checking ammunition and their armour. The PCR was wedged uncomfortably against Ronan’s back, but he didn’t move, with the child leaning on him.

Whelk asked ruefully; ‘Are you the only one who can pilot?’

It took Ronan a second to realise the question was directed at him, but he didn’t hesitate to raise a glare to Whelk’s face. _Classic officer bullshit_.

He answered emphatically; ‘Yeah. That’s why they call me _the_ _pilot_.’

Whelk exhaled, expression easing into haughty distaste.

‘Why don’t you have your own damn pilot?’ Ronan continued. ‘Since we’re so fucking expendable.’

Gansey might have attempted to intervene, but the present crew members from the Henrietta were already appropriately disillusioned. Helen shot a scornful look over her shoulder, Noah blinked, and Parrish carefully watched Whelk for his reaction.

‘Carruthers was the pilot.’ Rutherford explained lowly.

Ronan dropped his head back against the wall with a snort, stirring his small companion.

He wished it hadn’t moved.

Predictably, it caught Kavinsky’s (limited) attention.

‘What’s your plan for _that_ , Lynch?’

Ronan bristled instinctively at his tone. ‘ _What?_ ’

‘She’s a survivor.’ Parrish remarked softly.

Ronan glanced at him, surprised. Parrish must have seen the kid being pushed in the door and somehow ascertained it was girl. Although he might have been guessing.

‘She could be a carrier.’ Kavinsky replied, one corner of his mouth curling up. ‘Infected by one of those _bugs_.’

The hand on Ronan’s singlet tightened, and he growled warningly.

‘Fuck _all_ the way off, K. She wasn’t in the kitchen.’

‘Could still be infected.’ Proko pointed out slyly. ‘Could snap like the other one.’

‘She was alone.’ Kavinsky added, eyes narrow. ‘Maybe she was unconscious before we got in the hangar, eh? Maybe that’s why she’s not dead?’

Adrenaline flooded Ronan’s system, and he leaned forward, baring his teeth.

Helen shouted; ‘Inbound!’ with fortuitous timing, and the soldiers rapidly shifted their focus to their weapons and the door.

Ronan wrapped an arm around the child and stood up, struggling to pull his rifle over his shoulder. Parrish straightened, and leaned across to lend assistance. Ronan took the strap off too, in case he needed to ditch it.

Kavinsky had ordered Lee back to the cruiser with Brand, so at least there was actually a cruiser to reach. Helen hadn’t reported anything following them, but Ronan knew there was enough cover outside the colony ship to make clear observation difficult.

She slammed onto the brakes, and Proko threw the door open.

He leapt out first, swiftly followed by Skov and then Kavinsky. Helen climbed out of her seat, and Noah steadied her.

Rutherford was next, and Ronan followed him, lifting the girl with one arm, the rifle with the other. Parrish jumped out, Noah and Helen close behind.

There was the cruiser, silhouetted against an overcast sky. It was darker than Ronan had expected. He didn’t know how long they’d been inside, and he wasn’t sure of the time they’d landed… or the day length of the planet.

Parrish would know.

The ramp ratcheted down directly ahead of them, Brand and Lee slinking out, rifles raised. Prokopenko and Skov joined them, poised to defend against oncoming threats.

Ronan reached the top of the ramp and plunged into the belly of the ship, activating emergency protocols and auxiliary boosters for a rapid launch. He pushed the girl towards the copilot seat firmly, and when she stalled, Parrish intervened. He edged past and offered her a hand, silent but unthreatening.

Kavinsky arrived two steps behind them. He swiped for the girl, and Parrish flinched back, startled but blocking his path.

‘She’s not staying on this ship.’ He said viciously, teeth showing. ‘No fucking way.’

Ronan abandoned the fuel diverter and lunged at him; ’I swear I will-’

‘Don’t be moronic.’ Helen interrupted sharply, striding off the ramp. She had the good sense to stay out of their path as Ronan shoved Kavinsky backwards. ‘She’s too small to be a carrier.’

There was a brief hesitation, as Kavinsky considered the possibility of this being true, before he smirked. ‘How’d you figure that?’

‘The alien that… _emerged_ before was too large to be sustained by someone of her size.’

Kavinsky looked unconvinced, but Whelk, gaining the safety of the hold, hissed for him to back off, and let Ronan pilot the damn ship.

Proko shouted; ‘Incoming!’ and there was a crackle of plasma fire.

Ronan ignored Whelk’s shouted command, scooped up the girl, and sprinted through the narrow hold into the cockpit. He didn’t wait for assurance that the soldiers were all on board - leaving them behind hardly seemed a tragedy - but threw power to the launch boosters. He couldn’t wait for a safe elevation either, so he just pushed fuel straight to the thrusters. He might take out the fence, maybe a silo or two, a couple of radar towers, but if an alien got to the ship…

There was shouting from the hold - none of it seemingly directed at him - and more gunfire. They were at twenty feet, scraping something on the landing gear he was trying to haul up.

There was an unmistakeable screech, and simultaneously the cruiser struck something on the port side. It swung, unbalanced by the blow and the lowered ramp, and Ronan swore.

The girl had slipped from the copilot’s chair and onto the floor, under the console.

After a few moments the noise subsided, and the flashing ramp warning flickered out.

Ronan monitored the altitude scanner and the radar, hitting forty, eighty, two hundred feet before the adrenaline pulsing through his veins was anywhere near receding.

 

 

Whelk stuck his head in to murmur that Skov had been injured, so Helen wouldn’t be copiloting, and Ronan spared him a curt nod.

He’d pushed a lot of fuel into the thrusters during the launch, so he eased them off during the early flight. A few thousand more feet, and they’d be within comm distance of the Henrietta.

If they’d been able to patch in while on the ground… but it wasn’t worth thinking about. Any kind of reinforcements would probably fail to get any further than them, and any of the colonists would be long dead by the time they arrived.

He refused to contemplate the idea that the girl had been harmed, or would be harmed. Ronan would kill Kavinsky - or incapacitate him, at least - before Kavinsky so much as got within sight of her.

A few quiet footsteps interrupted his fuming. Ronan already knew who it was before Parrish had curled his fingers over the back of the copilot’s chair.

‘Ronan.’ He said indistinctly.

Ronan’s sneer was automatic, unreassuring. He moderated it with an acknowledgement. ‘Parrish.’

Careful to avoid disturbing the girl, Adam settled into the copilot’s seat.

He’d sat there often enough, followed the procedure so regularly that it was habit to adjust the switches and dials and examine the fluctuating patterns on the scanner to monitor their climb. Ronan could pilot alone, of course he fucking could, but he preferred _this_.

After a moment Adam shifted slightly, turning in the seat to look back towards the cargo hold, screened from view. Ronan could have asked him what was up - Parrish only gave such clear indications of inner turmoil if he wanted to - but he left it alone. What was ‘up’ was probably a day of unprocessed trauma, and there was no smooth way of opening that conversation.

‘I passed out.’ Parrish said finally, and very softly. ‘While we were down there.’

Ronan’s stomach sank to some place it really didn’t belong. He checked their altitude in silence.

‘I thought because I’d fallen.’ Adam continued. ‘But I’m not sure.’

Fuck. _Fuck_. No wonder Parrish had been disoriented.

‘Carruthers was with you.’ Ronan’s response was equally quiet. He could feel pressure on his lungs.

Adam moved his head, about an inch. A negative. ‘He only found me a few minutes before you did.’

‘Did you tell her?’

Another motion. _No_. ‘Haven’t had a chance.’

 _He knows_ , Ronan realised. _He knows, but does he understand?_

He looked sideways sharply, and Parrish lifted his chin in response. He must have stripped off the suit as soon as they’d sealed the rear door. In all fairness, his had been decorated with an unsavoury quantity of brain matter. Now, suit-free, above the perfectly standard collar of his t-shirt, there were marks, impressions, bruises.

He let Ronan touch him, lift his chin slightly, and stare at his neck. It was slightly intoxicating. Ronan couldn’t imagine how much self-control it took for Adam to allow even that, watchfully, without moving his hands or pulling away.

The marks were deep, and the bruises dark, even on Parrish, but Ronan understood that he shared them. He withdrew his hand and touched his own throat curiously. The discomfort inflicted by the seals on their suits had ceased to register, even though it was apparently still physically harsh. If there were marks left by the alien, they were indistinguishable.

Ronan didn’t feel any more calm.

‘Keep your mouth shut about it.’ He muttered grimly.

Parrish turned his attention back towards the partition, the threat in the back of the ship.

He knew. He was too smart to not know, but Ronan had to say it anyway. He had to make sure.

‘If K finds out.’ He hissed. ‘You’ll catch a bullet whether you’re a carrier or not.’

Adam didn’t react. After a pause he let his gaze slide back to the window.

‘It’s a contaminant.’ He replied slowly. ‘It’s a quarantine violation.’

‘You don’t know anything happened.’

‘And if it did?’

Ronan couldn’t think about it. It made him feel whisky-sick and helplessly angry. He said simply. ‘Cryo.’

‘The embryo could be the only vulnerable stage.’ Adam suggested. ’The only opportunity to kill it.’

‘Don’t be an idiot.’ Ronan snapped, slightly too loudly.

‘I’m not an idiot.’ Adam replied patiently.

Ronan twisted in his chair and shot Parrish his most scathing glare. ‘Don’t be a hero.’

The response was a gently amused exhalation.

‘What are you ladies wittering about?’ Kavinsky swung around the partition, bright-eyed and psychopathic. Ronan moved a leg reflexively, stretching it in front of the girl.

Leaning forward over the scanner, Adam ignored the intrusion.

Ronan curled a lip. ‘Parrish wants to know if you stole your hair from an alien.’

Kavinsky smirked at him, unbearably pleased.

‘If you can find your balls, K, you’ll want to hold on to them.’ Ronan gave him the middle finger, and shoved open the fuel lines to the thrusters.

 

 

 

It took too long to reach the Henrietta. Too long to dock. Too long waiting for the soldiers to shuffle out of the cruiser, their numbers sorely depleted, Skov being half-carried, attended by Helen for the gaping wound in his shoulder.

Parrish disembarked with characteristically brisk efficiency, and Ronan waited for the others to disappear from view before he attempted to coax the girl - _girl?_ \- out from underneath the console.

She was only little, barely a quarter of Ronan’s size. Her eyes were massive, like the strange nocturnal creatures from Mørke, and she looked oddly alien herself. She climbed into Ronan’s arms unwillingly, and only after he’d threatened to leave her behind.

She seemed to grasp the concept that they’d gone into orbit, and was intent on communicating her approval by pointing to various features of their surroundings as Ronan walked. She didn’t speak, which was a relief.

Ronan wanted to take her to Helen, promptly, but he suspected the soldier swarm would be lingering. He took the next best option, and carried her to the bridge instead.

Gansey was calm, on the surface. Ronan could see every muscle in his face struggling to contain his actual expression. It might have been horror, or distress, or anguish, but he was refusing to show it.

‘Ronan!’ That was real relief, crossing his regal features, and suppressed concern, probably about Ronan’s head wounds. He might have risked a hug, if he hadn’t noticed the creature curled against Ronan’s chest.

Parrish had commed them from the ship, as Noah wasn’t entirely intelligible, so they had a fairly good idea of what had happened. Adam had warned them about the aliens, the deaths, Noah’s injuries, and the little girl, but he hadn’t mentioned his situation, or Kavinsky’s threats.

Possibly the majority of Gansey’s surprise came from how tightly the child clung to Ronan’s neck (tight enough to limit his oxygen intake).

‘Noah?’ Blue asked, springing from her chair fervently.

‘Parrish and Henry are with him.’ Ronan sighed, attempting to loosen the girl’s grip.

Gansey shook his head, lips parted. ‘We lost so many.’

‘They lost so many.’ Ronan corrected flatly. ‘We didn’t, despite Kavinsky’s best fucking efforts.’

‘Ronan.’ Gansey scolded, eyeing the child anxiously.

‘She’s heard worse.’ Ronan dismissed, and she sniffled agreement.

‘What’s her name?’ Gansey inquired, uncomfortably.

Ronan shrugged.

The door slid open, and a glance over his shoulder prompted Ronan to move to the far side of the navcon, away from Kavinsky, Jiang and Prokopenko. Helen, entering the room after them, quickly pursued him.

He felt her attention fix on his face. The bruises had come out worse, and the majority of the blood had dried to a crisp and unattractive brown during the trip back, but he felt it was holding his head together so he was temporarily comfortable with it.

Helen herself had acquired a faint sheen of sweat and a series of impressive streaks of blood across her shirt and arms.

‘How’s Skov?’ Ronan asked bluntly.

‘He’ll survive.’ She answered. ‘Properly treated, he can go straight into cryo.’

‘Forget that.’ Kavinsky interjected.

Ronan sneered automatically, but he wasn’t surprised. There was nothing Kavinsky wouldn’t weigh in on, if it served his purposes.

‘Nobody’s going into cryo while _she’s_ still on the ship.’ Kavinsky persisted, drawling his _s_ ’s.

Gansey turned, confused (but still annoyed, because he knew Kavinsky almost as well as Ronan).

Helen drew a sharp, irritated breath. ‘As entirely _childish_ as that is, I can simply use the _med-scan_ , to check. To relieve your deep-seated concerns.’

Kavinsky grinned at her, all teeth and genuine enjoyment, and Ronan hated it, hated him.

He knew he’d tensed to lunge because the girl’s grip tightened again, and he had to relax his shoulders to get her to ease off.

‘Why not?’ Kavinsky rejoined, elated. ‘Why not scan everyone?’

Gansey glanced at Helen, and she shrugged. He looked to Ronan, and Ronan continued glaring across the room.

Adam. _Adam_.

Kavinsky was pushing the idea just to be an asshole. He didn’t suspect Parrish. He _couldn’t_.

Opal and Parrish hadn’t been the only ones alone. Brand had been with the cruiser, sealed or not, by himself. Lee had been alone at the exit, with nowhere to hide.

Ronan would find a way to distract Kavinsky from Parrish’s exam. And if, _if_ , something was wrong, Ronan would just put him straight into cryo. They’d find some cure or extraction method after he was safe.

‘In fifteen minutes.’ Helen declared irritably. ‘If you fuckknuckles can give the assholery a rest for that long.’

She marched out, flicking her head disdainfully, leaving Gansey scandalised, Blue delighted, and Ronan smirking in her wake.

 

 

 

Adam was helping Henry with Noah when Gansey commed to tell them Helen would be conducting examinations on everyone who’d gone to the planet’s surface.

Whatever alarm it caused, he reduced to nothing within a few seconds.

He was concerned about Ronan’s girl - Helen’s surmise about her size had been pulled so promptly from the air he was amazed Kavinsky had bought it.

It would necessarily kill her faster, yes, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t _be_ there.

He resisted the urge to touch his own chest.

It had been aching since the cruiser, since he’d made the decision to warn Ronan. He’d assumed it was psychosomatic, initially, but digging amongst Henry’s things to aid with repairs hadn’t alleviated it.

Noah’s hardware was predominantly intact. Most of the damage was superficial, but if there was even the faintest anomaly in his internal composition the long-term wear could be debilitating. Henry was doing most of the structural modification, and Adam was running system diagnostics while Noah was out.

He’d need time to grow the grafts for Noah’s skin - it would be most efficient to organise it all before cryo, so it could grow over the next couple of months during their journey back.

He wondered what Whelk had decided to do about the planet.

Fifteen minutes had passed, and Henry and Adam had continued work uninterrupted. Twenty minutes, and Henry’s careful use of the micro-flame had smoothed the damaged points of the protective shell around Noah’s hardware.

Thirty minutes, and Adam took an earpiece and went to the lab to find the cloned skin.

It was standard protocol to keep skin cells from synthetics on file. They were artificial, but they did have regenerative properties, and in the event of an incendiary incident leaving the synthetic core intact but making skin replication impossible, the ship had the capacity to produce a completely new skin. It took a damn time, but it was better than synthetic replacement.

Noah’s cells weren’t the only ones Adam had stored, either. Contemporary methods of cloning were convoluted and imperfect, but in any case, Adam had DNA from every crew member of the Henrietta. Henry also kept multiple backups of their neural scans.

It would be Gansey’s worst nightmare if any of them died. Adam couldn’t entirely fathom what his own reaction would be… So he and Henry had taken whatever steps were available to ensure it wasn’t possible.

Adam wondered what had delayed Helen’s work.

He found Noah’s samples in the cryo-fridge. He’d organised them following the pattern of the ship. Gansey, Ronan, Henry, Noah, Blue, and him.

Gansey, Ronan, Henry, Noah, Blue, Adam.

The door opened. Adam looked up.


	9. It's not Neuss, sorry guys

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uhhh. Yeah. *THE PAST*  
> (This is convoluted and painful, and I think it might be difficult to read because I died trying to edit it, so I'm sorry about any mistakes and please shout at me to fix them)

Once, after travelling a few dozen years in cryosleep, they’d found a habitable planet.

Habitable, of course, was a relative term. It was a planet with a breathable atmosphere, to give a more accurate description. A planet with carbon-based life forms. A planet with mammals, and insects, and semi-recognisable flora.

Adam didn’t detect any life forms likely to pose a threat. The majority of the fauna were herbivorous, and quite small. Many of them were nocturnal. The larger animals were singularly massive, either the size of a shuttlecraft, with eight huge legs and hair like an early Earth mammoth, or the shape of spaghetti, with four long, grasping limbs and achingly slow, weary movement through the upper branches of the planet’s immense trees.

As was customary, Ronan had named the planet. He called it _Dùiseacht_ , and it was stunningly beautiful.

Ronan took them down in the cruiser, circling a larger area than usual and giving them time to soak in the raw expanse of forest spread out over hills below them. They found where the forest dissipated into plains, broad stretches of tall, swaying green grass dotted by vast silver lakes and grazing creatures, and that was where they landed.

The Henrietta didn’t have regular away-teams. Sometimes, depending on the planet, Gansey would only take Ronan with him. At other times they would team up interchangeably with Blue, Noah, and Adam, depending on the mood and their mission. Henry rarely came planetside.

Due to some impenetrable series of events, Gansey had partnered with Blue for this venture, and Ronan was tolerating Adam’s presence. They weren’t tracking anything in particular, and that was basically permission to wander wherever they wanted and see what they could find.

Gansey wanted to observe the large animals on the plains, and find the edge of one of the shining bodies of water, so Adam agreed to broach the boundary of the forest.

It was cooler under the towering trees, and the ground was richly decorated in rust-coloured vines and low flat golden flowers, and numerous closed flowerbuds of variegated hues. Adam walked ahead, trying to locate as many examples of new species as he could. Ronan dawdled, prodding at plants and trees and the dark, soft soil, leaving the task of recording them to Adam.

He’d carefully ensured that the atmosphere was safe for suitless exploration. Protocol recommended spacesuits at all times in environments prior to terraforming, but Ronan had a particular and characteristic loathing for following protocol.

That was the basis of his wandering, unconcerned, through dense forest in black jeans and a sweater. Adam, admittedly, was wearing his coveralls instead of a suit, and neither Gansey nor Blue were particularly close observers of the rulebook, but Ronan was necessarily the instigator of their carelessness.

There was no limit to what they could discover on a such a verdant, thriving planet, but Adam mentally set the edge of their exploration at the top of the nearest hill. It probably wouldn’t give them much of a vantage point, but if they returned later for more cataloguing, he would know where to pick up his search.

They weren’t carrying supplies. Ronan had a gun strapped on his belt, and the tablet Adam used for his work and general monitoring could be tucked into a pocket against his thigh. Possibly he had underestimated the difficulty of reaching the nearby crest. Progress was slow, partly due to the sheer variety of undergrowth, and partly due to Ronan’s loitering. Some of the colourful, heavy flowerbuds were beginning to open as the sight of the plains receded. There wasn’t much direct sunlight hitting the forest floor through the canopy, so Adam made a mental note to investigate a temperature based cycle. The other, flatter flowers were reminiscent of carnivorous plants. They presented apparent trigger hairs, daubed in tiny beads of nectar, although they didn’t seem designed to close up like a Fly-Trap or lure as successfully as a Pitcher plant.

Adam warned Ronan, despite his military boots and his distraction.

He was more intent on the opening flowers… yellow, blue, white, red, orange, pink, purple. Adam had already noted their similarity, so despite the range of vibrant colours he’d only decided to record one example of the type. Ronan was persuaded to inspect each of them carefully, either by their colour or their lingering scent.

It was hardly floral. More like a faint vanilla, with a hint of sharpness behind it, like it threatened to sear the sniffer’s nostrils but never quite did.

Adam gradually slowed down, lingered over his examinations. Maybe they wouldn’t reach the top of the hill. It didn’t matter much, because they would stay in orbit as long as Gansey wanted.

Ronan overtook him, striding ahead, although he paused and stared as often as Adam did.

Motion overhead would occasionally prompt them both to look up, and catch a glimpse of brilliantly plumed birds or a limb or tail of one immense primate-like creature.

Water drops still gathered at the very tips or the curved basins of leaves, suggestive of relatively recent rain. The ground wasn’t damp, but the significant quantity of ground covering flora could have absorbed it within a short period of time.

Adam resisted the urge to take more photographs of the luscious, spreading flowers. They had petals similar to Earth flowers, or those cultivated in the Rhea Botanic garden, but they were thicker, and very heavy. Adam nudged a few with his boot, marvelling at the weight.

They lacked the little sticky hairs of the lower flowers, and seemed essentially harmless. Probably they survived by absorbing large quantities of the rainfall and storing it for minerals.

Ronan was getting distant, so Adam directed himself onward.

He was difficult, as ever. Never quite committing to the task, for fear of disliking it, or possibly liking it too much.

‘Ronan.’ Adam caught a toe on a vine, but corrected himself. ‘Ronan.’

His companion didn’t pause, and Adam let him go. Ronan wasn’t easy to manage, and he wasn’t Adam’s _to_ manage, anyway. He was Gansey’s and that was the end of it. A damn relief, too, because Adam didn’t have the will to do it.

It wasn’t as if Ronan’s propensity for being headstrong was all that negative. He picked the odd fight, and he liked to drink, play cards and race, but Adam thought it lent a certain legitimacy to his position. Gansey’s occasional bouts of obsessive intensity secured his Captaincy better than his levelheadedness ever would. Blue’s impressive competitiveness and her reputation for following through on threats was what earned her such devotion, from them and from others. Noah was the most humane synthetic Adam had ever met, and for such an introvert Henry desired belonging above nearly all else.

It consolidated each of them to be so outrageously contradictory sometimes.

And it was the same with Ronan. He was harsh, often. Harsh in a purely oppositional sense. Adam envied it as much as he sometimes resented it, because he was harsh in a regular sense. Fundamentally harsh.

Ronan was fundamentally warm, that was the difference. He could play the savage, roguish mercenary, but his gentleness was effortless, unpracticed. If someone needed a distraction, Ronan would provide it. He was never without cards, or jokes, or food. He’d collected so many things during his travels that he was always capable of producing a new object of fascination. He liked to drop the cruiser into space and punch around at high FTL, making his passengers dizzy and sick and goading them into fighting back.

Adam had almost caught up with him, but there was a large violet orb growing on a creeper vine nearby that he hesitated over.

‘You know we’ve catalogued over 2,000 organisms?’ He asked loudly. ‘I’d be surprised if they don’t give Gansey a title.’

‘Another title.’ Ronan answered. He was facing the other way, so it was muffled, but Adam wouldn’t have been able to tell if he was joking anyway.

Ronan often got morbid about Gansey’s reputation. Adam suspected it was a general unwillingness to share his beloved friend, even if it was for recognition from the whole human-populated galaxy.

‘Another title.’ Adam echoed patiently. He was tired, probably from an unintentionally late night, and turning back for the cruiser was an appealing idea, but Gansey hadn’t called them off yet.

Ronan had stopped a couple dozen feet away, and was idly examining a nearby tree. There was a dark line of damp across the shoulders of his sweater. Despite the cool protection of the trees, the walk was work, and Adam’s own hands were hot and slightly sweaty. He rubbed them on his knees before he straightened, noting the drop of moisture that promptly rolled down the length of his spine.

Ronan looked almost wraithlike, pale in the shadows of ancient foliage. Mystical. It helped that he carried himself with force, certainty. He always had a particular intention about him, that Adam had at various times labelled _bravado_ , _affectation_ , and _dramatics_.

Adam didn’t have that either. He had _intentions_ , definitely. He had _intensity_. He had limited capacity to display either of those attributes to other people, except through harshness.

He’d tried telling himself it was a product of circumstance. At times he seemed to be scraping the bottom of the barrel for some demonstrable personality, when he knew it was there. He’d had to live with it every day of his life, and he had to spend the majority of that time crushing it out of sight.

Nowadays it just didn’t come naturally. Or the parts that did appear weren’t the good parts. The only honesty he was able to offer was the brutal kind.

Ronan didn’t have to be brutal when he was honest. Ronan could be soft, kind.

‘Are you going all the way up this damn hill?’ Ronan interrupted sharply, his voice rippling back through the thick air.

Adam shrugged, even though he knew Ronan wouldn’t see it. Watching him fume and overreact was entirely too satisfying.

Ronan had taken him racing, one time. Cruiser racing around terraformed planets and moons, cultivated little empires.

Gansey had received a summons from a space station in that central solar system, haughtily named _Olympus_ , and Adam had only needed to step off the Henrietta to feel painfully out of place. Gilded clothing was the accepted standard, and judging by Gansey’s receipt of his own embroidered brocade outfit, Adam wouldn’t make it beyond the first security checkpoint.

There was probably no reason to take it personally. Blue was in the same position as him, and she didn’t seem to care. Admittedly, Henry and Ronan were able to get in on family name alone, though neither of them tried, and Noah received his own costume, but was treated like Gansey’s personal synthetic manservant.

Adam had just felt the history on him like a second skin. Filth that couldn’t be erased.

Ronan had decided upon cruiser joyriding while Gansey was delayed, and as soon as he’d found a few susceptible (and wealthy) victims, he’d challenged them to a race.

They’d gone for it. They always did. Ronan had that effect on people. He made them… hungry.

For competition, for challenge, for violence. Ronan was like an adrenaline high. A drug.

It affected Adam sometimes, unexpectedly. Watching him drop the cruiser into a planet’s atmosphere. Listening to him surreptitiously telling Noah rude jokes. His absurd and amusing trash talk with Blue. The perfect treasures he hid in his room, and produced as consolation for any ailment.

The way he smiled, starting with the corner of his mouth and spreading, uncontrolled, until it was a grin. The tattoo that spiderwebbed across his back, as intricate as a labyrinth. His arms… God, his arms. His _shoulders_. Basically the whole torso area. Skin. Eyebrows that Adam admired for their demand of recognition. He had smaller ears than Adam, too, nicer ears. Lovely, well-structured ears.

He piloted like a bat out of hell, and he would never lose. For every canister of fuel he burnt out, he won enough to afford five more, and Adam appreciated that formula. He also kicked back in his chair like he was on vacation, smirked like he knew he couldn’t fail, and generally acted like a gigantic jackass.

Afterwards he’d laugh like an idiot and pet his cruiser like beloved animal. If the rush was enough, he’d allow a glance or two at Adam. Stare from under his eyelashes, shadowed, before they flickered against his skin.

Adam had thought about it, thought about him, more than once. But with Ronan it was… complicated. He tried not to.

He couldn’t stop himself now, on Dùiseacht. Watching Ronan walk ahead of him, long legs, even, certain strides. The length of his bare neck, pale in the shade. Shoulder blades against the fabric of his sweater. Adam could have sworn he could see Ronan listening, the faintest tilt of his head as he moved.

The forest was beautiful. Ronan was _breathtaking_.

Adam hadn’t been _waiting_ to feel something. There was no possibility that this could ever work. He didn’t have the _capacity_.

Ronan stopped; ‘Parrish.’

Adam didn’t stop. ‘What?’

‘I’m not going further.’ Ronan sighed. He swung around, gesturing forwards. ‘It’s still stupidly far away.’

‘Ok.’ Adam shrugged again, reflexively. He was close enough to see the pink flush of Ronan’s skin.

The warmth humming in his nerves was hypnotising. He didn’t know… He hadn’t _known_.

That Ronan’s abruptness was more amusing than it was aggravating.

That Ronan’s petulance was so endearing.

That he wanted to run his thumbs over the colour in Ronan’s cheeks and promise him anything he wanted.

Ronan accepted the dismissal by settling onto the ground. He sensibly avoided the carnivorous flowers, and slouched around the long tendrils of vine creeping across the forest floor.

Adam didn’t continue past him, further up the hill. He let one boot dig into the soil beside Ronan’s hip, and stepped over him languidly, so Ronan was lying between his ankles.

Ronan watched through his lashes, suspicious but unresisting, and Adam sank onto his knees.

It would have been foolish to pretend Ronan wasn’t attractive, so Adam had never tried. He’d reminded himself that Ronan was volatile, even fragile, and Adam wasn’t well known for his sensitivity.

He knew Ronan would risk it - he’d mastered the art of risking himself - but Ronan didn’t _see_ the faultlines.

So Adam did nothing. He didn’t avoid the arguments or the flirtation, or the demands for attention or the challenges. He didn’t even avoid Ronan’s guilt, when they were years into deep space and Ronan would brood.

What Ronan felt was out of Adam’s reach, but he’d stopped fighting the hunger a long time ago. Now, perhaps, he was _changing_.

He grazed his hands up Ronan’s ribcage, marvelling at the heat radiating through his shirt, and leaned forward. Ronan blinked slowly, but he didn’t move.

How long had they played this damn game? Neither of them ever risking a toe over the line, but always painfully aware of how close it was.

Ronan frowned, eyebrows lowered pensively, but his breathing changed when Adam slid both palms over his chest and up to cradle his jaw. He was blushing, and Adam traced the colour over his cheekbones.

This was it. This was what he was missing. He would give Ronan anything, to see him happy. He would sacrifice everything for him.

‘Parrish.’ Ronan’s breath brushed his wrist. Adam kissed the corner of his mouth, the soft slope of his warm cheek.

Ronan caught his shoulders, startling him. His grip was loose, and his expression soft. ‘Parrish.’ He repeated. ‘Hold on. Let me check the comms.’

Adam yielded, primarily because he hadn’t noticed himself if they were still within contact distance of the ship. Gansey was always very careful about keeping in touch, and if they lingered here and he couldn’t reach them he would panic. He leaned back and pulled the device from his pocket.

Ronan held the tablet above his face, concealing his expression and blocking access to his lips and cheeks and throat.

Adam occupied himself toying with the hem of Ronan’s shirt instead, letting his fingers scrape the skin beneath.

Long minutes passed before Ronan flipped the tablet around.

‘Adam,’ He said softly, ‘Adam, what’s this?’

Adam leaned forward. He would rather discard the tablet entirely, but he wasn’t about to abandon Gansey and Blue.

Ronan had found his way into the atmospheric monitoring system. It wasn’t detecting the presence of dangerous substances in the air they were breathing, so it hadn’t triggered a warning, but there was something different, quantities climbing as Adam puzzled over it.

‘It’s a chemical compound.’ He answered finally, wishing he was less sluggishly distracted by Ronan’s waist between his legs. ‘I don’t recognise all the constituents, but I think…’

He wiped his eyes, squinting, as anxiety unfurled in the pit of his stomach.

It was an extremely complex compound, and Adam struggled to piece together the components of the structural formula he was able to recognise. The tablet filled in a couple of the blanks, including a few friendly pieces of advice about the potential side effects of inhalation.

‘It must be diffusing.’ Adam continued. ‘But it’s being replaced at a remarkable rate.’

Ronan’s fingers circled his wrist. ‘What does it do?’

Adam moved the tablet aside so he could see Ronan’s face. He was still irresistible, a sculpture nestled in the leaf litter, and Adam contemplated ignoring the facts altogether.

_It wasn’t real._

‘It’s likely affecting our chemical levels.’ He explained quietly. ‘It’s-’

He cut himself off, and rubbed his eyes again. The exhaustion was worsening, probably another byproduct. _Why? What was the purpose of this compound?_

Ronan sat up surprisingly quickly, and curled his fingers around Adam’s ribs. ‘Then we get the fuck out, yeah?’

‘Yeah.’ He wouldn’t have been able to stand if Ronan hadn’t pushed him to his feet. ‘We need to…’

‘Decon.’ Ronan finished heavily.

Between the fatigue, and Ronan’s hands still squeezing his sides, Adam couldn’t finish a thought. He nodded agreement and let Ronan shove him along under the trees.

Recognition that his mind was compromised did _not_ prevent the effects. He was strongly inclined to lean against Ronan as they walked, and it was increasingly difficult to step over the roots instead of tripping over them. They staggered along like a drunken four legged creature, and Adam turned the compound over in his head.

Ronan broke the silence suddenly.

‘Fuck, _Gansey_.’ He flailed for his earpiece, unbalancing them both.

The conversation was short. Ronan ascertained that Gansey was unaffected, and scared the hell out of him by warning that they’d need decontamination _if_ they made it back to the ship.

Even if they made it to the cruiser, Adam wasn’t sure Ronan would be able to pilot. He wasn’t suffering the same loss of control as Adam (who was unable to stop himself thinking hazily of Ronan’s bottom lip), but his energy levels were clearly deteriorating.

‘The fuck is this?’ He asked finally, after another near-catastrophic stumble. ‘Parrish, you know?’

He nodded vaguely. ‘Flowers.’ He mumbled. ‘The… uh…’

Ronan smelled like forest and honey.

‘Those?’ Ronan pointed to a patch of multicoloured flowers, cursing as he tripped over a vine.

‘Those.’ Adam repeated. ‘It’s a… a fly-trap.’ He gestured broadly to the coloured flowers, the vines, the wide, flat carnivorous flowers.

Ronan swore, and Adam felt his grip tighten. ‘The forest is trying to _eat_ us?’

He even managed to sound offended.

 

 

 

Gansey and Blue met them at the border of the forest. Gansey’s hair was practically standing on end from how many times he had fretfully run his fingers through it.

Ronan dragged Adam from the shadows and released him in Gansey’s direction with determined finality.

‘What the hell happened?’ Gansey caught Adam and commenced a thorough inspection. ‘Are you okay? Are you hurt?’

‘No’m’fine.’

He felt a little too close to Gansey, actually. Gansey’s eyes were green, flecks of bronze radiating out from the centre, wide and concerned. His fingers were digging into Adam’s shoulders.

Adam frowned and hastily attempted to back away.

‘It’s fucking… tranquilliser… pollen.’ Ronan complained loudly. He was already stumbling towards the cruiser, sensibly placing a safe distance between himself and anyone else.

There was no chance he’d be able to fly it. For every few steps he managed to take he veered a good four or five feet off course.

‘Sargent.’ He declared eventually, slumping against the hull. ‘I think you’d better drive.’

 

 

 

Gansey made Adam go through decon first, and he found Noah waiting to lead him to his quarters on the far side.

He believed the effects had started to wear off as soon as they’d escaped the forest, and by the time Noah had carefully helped him onto his mattress, he was sure the affection he felt for the synth was almost normal.

Sleep and the return to sanity brought home the sheer depth of Adam’s discomfort.

Ronan didn’t do him the dishonour of trying to avoid him, but _Ronan_ hadn’t sat on a crewmate in the middle of a forest and attempted (and to a considerable extent, _managed_ ) to feel him up.

The chemical high disappeared with the fatigue, and it felt like a punch to the gut.

Adam stayed in his quarters for the first few days they were in orbit, leaving further planetary exploration (in spacesuits) to the others.

Noah visited him with food and consolation. Ronan hadn’t shared the details with anyone, and Adam was grateful, but Noah was perfectly capable of analysing the chemical compound and probable effects himself.

‘Neither of you were responsible for the extremity of your actions.’ Noah offered reassuringly. ‘Ronan is aware of that.’

‘It’s not really the problem.’ Adam answered, leaning back on his bed. He didn’t particularly want to discuss it, but one of Noah’s core interests was maintaining social harmony. And Noah adored Ronan. The more he worried about this, the more agitated Ronan probably was.

‘What is the problem?’ Noah asked, pulling at the leg of Adam’s pants.

Adam didn’t answer immediately. Realistically, Noah just wasn’t going to understand, and Adam was glad of it.

‘I don’t want to hurt Ronan.’ He said.

‘Ronan isn’t hurt.’ Noah smiled at him.

Adam turned a page in his book, despite the fact he wasn’t reading. ‘Noah.’

The smile slipped. ‘Ronan knows you didn’t _mean_ to do that.’

His careful avoidance of the word “want” didn’t escape Adam’s notice.

‘He doesn’t expect anything.’ Noah added. ‘He’s not going to get hurt.’

‘Noah.’ Adam repeated, and the familiarity of Noah’s attentive face gave him courage. ‘Why didn’t it affect him as much?’

It took Noah a long time to answer, but Adam wasn’t sure if he was processing the possible explanations or trying to formulate a kind way to respond.

‘You might have had greater exposure.’ He supplied, looking forlorn. ‘Or Ronan was less susceptible because… because he is more accustomed to those kinds of chemical surges.’

Adam nodded understanding, and Noah sadly allowed him return to his book.

 

 

 

Gansey brought samples back from the planet, and Adam consented to leave his quarters, but only to help him store them properly in the laboratory.

Gansey had a vague idea that Ronan had said something insulting and offended him.

‘He didn’t.’ Adam hastened to assure him. 'I just didn’t like losing control.’

Gansey eyed him carefully, as if he could tell Adam was withholding just from his face (which Adam already knew wasn’t possible).

‘Ronan didn’t say anything?’

‘Nothing.’

‘He’s just being Ronan, then.’ Gansey sighed.

Adam frowned. He hadn’t seen Ronan in nearly five days, but anxiety had given way to pervasive reluctance, and Adam was still stalling for time. It wasn’t _Ronan’s_ fault he didn’t want to think about the forest.

‘I was being unreasonable.’ He confessed. ‘Not Ronan.’

‘Makes a change.’ Gansey answered. ‘He’s still moody about Blue piloting the cruiser.’

Adam smirked. ‘I’m still surprised he suggested it.’

Gansey helped him pack everything away, including one living, carefully contained flower.

Walking Adam back to his quarters, Gansey concluded; ’Ronan wouldn’t judge you for how you felt. Or, you know… he wouldn’t be my Ronan.’

Before Adam had time to process that Gansey didn’t mean what _Adam_ was thinking about, his Captain was gone.


	10. Avoidance of reality is so darn attractive in a guy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now to resume your regularly scheduled programming.

Adam, for some reason, was surprised to see Ronan standing in the doorway.

Ronan, for some reason, seemed even more surprised to see Adam standing by the cryostore. Surprised and… agitated.

‘Parrish.’ He said abruptly.

‘Lynch.’ Adam answered, tone neutral, even holding his eyebrows down as Ronan slammed the door shut. ‘Did you need something?’

‘No.’ Ronan was, puzzlingly, not quite angry. He wasn’t quite frustrated, either. It very much seemed as though he was trying to be one of the two. He was, in typical Ronan fashion, expressing himself through action, but that action was oddly erratic, even for him.

Adam watched him eye the closed door suspiciously, take two steps forward, turn, a step back. He looked around again, as if still doubtful Adam was really present, and then sneered at something on the bench opposite him (Adam didn’t have the opportunity to see what) before turning his attention to the tray Adam had pulled out of the cryostore.

‘What is it?’ Adam asked, immediately assailed by the reflexive concern that he’d caused this by telling Ronan about the infection. He hadn’t mentioned the pain, to avoid being overly dramatic, but he could have inadvertently upset him by allowing the possibility.

Ronan flicked one hand, too dismissively, too _unironically_.

He moved, with sudden speed, to the far end of the room.

It was basically a rectangle, with benches lining three walls and half lining the fourth, overhead cupboards, drawers for storage, a sparse but pleasing spread of equipment, and a long steel worktable in the centre, all of it meticulously clean and and organised.

Ronan seemed intent on destroying that little stock of stability. He pulled open a drawer, presumably at random, and then another, and then a cupboard. He also decided to pull out a disparate series of items, glance at them with disinterest, and then discard them at random onto a nearby surface; the bench, a different drawer, the steel table, on top of a glass cabinet full of delicate scientific instruments, the _floor_.

‘Ronan.’ Adam was startled by his own irritation. This was probably the end goal. Ronan’s master plan for distraction, to start a big enough fight that neither of them would mind when - if - Adam died.

He even moved the flower from Duiseacht, although it barely seemed to register. He moved it to the middle of the table, right to the middle of the room, and if he hadn’t been so preoccupied Adam would have been bothered by _what that meant_ …

It was attached to a feed line, a tube Adam had carefully lowered through the top of the glass box, so he could keep it alive without ever having to feel the effects again. At rare times, Adam would linger over it, resenting and coveting it in equal measure. Ronan barely noticed it.

He found the geologic toolkit in the fourth drawer he left pulled out, but as he turned to deliver this, with equal dissatisfaction, onto the tabletop, the lock clicked and the whole box swung open, scattering a considerable quantity of metal tools (some particularly fine drill bits) across the floor. He looked mildly interested by this development, but it didn’t prevent him from continuing his search.

‘ _Ronan_.’ That was considerably more aggravated. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

The question was, to all intents and purposes, rhetorical. Adam didn’t expect an answer, and probably there was no need for one that extended beyond “being Ronan in a more Ronan way than usual”.

He left his samples safely on the distant benchtop and strode over to the other end of the room, notably Ronan’s by virtue of the fact that it was descending into chaos.

Ronan hadn’t even contemplated picking up the debris, and Adam crouched in spite of his persistent nearby activity, seething. He half expected to receive a blow to the back of the head from another dislodged object, which, in turn, gave rise to the creeping theory that Ronan had sustained a more serious head wound on-planet than suspected.

He looked up, a cursory glance to inspect for any sign of blood or disorientation, and realised that Ronan had only recently showered. It was always slightly difficult to tell because of his shaved head, but a clean shirt was starting to stick from moisture, and the dried blood had been more effectively removed from his face.

Worse, the anger still wasn’t anger. It was even more jittery now, like Ronan hadn’t managed to pull his energy together, and it was seeping out the cracks.

There was a bruise swelling over his temple, dark and ominous, and the place where his eyebrow had split was raw, a sliver of bright red against black and white.

Adam’s own irritation crystallised, with sudden ferocity. He threw a lengthy drill bit back into the box with a less-than-threatening dink.

‘What the fuck, Lynch?’

Ronan glanced at him, hardly with alarm, and airily tossed aside a sheaf of notes. ‘Where’s that scalpel?’

Adam stared, exasperation and doubt primary combatants for his attention, but resolved to pull the little laser blade from his pocket anyway. He presented it with a pointed scowl.

Ronan couldn’t have assumed that he’d come in here and put it away. Ronan couldn’t have assumed that the best way to find it was to ignore Adam and randomly distribute all of his equipment and work across half the damn room.

The door opened again, and Adam felt the first reluctant surge of relief at being crouched on the floor.

If he hadn’t recognised Kavinsky’s boots, he would have recognised the way he leaned, almost precariously, without balancing against anything. And the way he drawled, after a momentary pause to assess Ronan’s mess.

‘Thought you were off playing nursemaid, Lynch.’

Few people made Ronan’s last name sound in the least bit positive, but the way Kavinsky said it sounded like sacrilege. Adam recalled an earlier realisation that he despised it.

‘Now I’m not.’ The jitteriness was gone. So was the action. Ronan was just standing in the middle of his bomb site, facing Kavinsky, staring at him, everything else forgotten.

Adam recognised that he despised that, too.

‘You sure about that?’

What he duly recognised that he didn’t despise, with a growing sense of uneasiness, was Ronan standing between him and Kavinsky. He wasn’t even sure he was overly affronted by the mess, anymore. He considered the toolkit nearly set to rights in front of him, with faint and unwelcome embarrassment.

The scalpel was still heavy in his palm, suddenly seeming very solid.

He tucked it further up into his sleeve, and stood up, lifting the toolkit onto the tabletop, and examined Kavinsky with restraint.

It wasn’t a revelation that Kavinsky and Ronan had fought, but the initial awareness hadn’t brought the distaste it did presently. Probably because Ronan’s fights were Ronan’s business, and the way Kavinsky was watching Adam felt a lot more like Adam’s business than he wanted it to.

‘Parrish.’

It was enough to perceive the threat. Adam didn’t acknowledge it, showing just enough innocent incredulity about Kavinsky learning his name to be annoying.

He weighed his options. Kavinsky was blocking the doorway, but Ronan was between Kavinsky and him, and there were a lot of scattered impediments.

Probably Kavinsky suspected him, and this was an attempt to put him down.

‘Sergeant.’ He answered blankly.

Prokopenko came slinking through the open door. He was more like a cartoon than a person, in some strange way. And probably more like a cartoon anthropomorphised weasel than anything else. He still had a rifle, hung over a shoulder. Kavinsky had a handgun, on his belt, and Adam had the discomforting sensation that he noticed Adam’s wary glance at it.

‘What the fuck do you _want_?’ Ronan asked, and every word was a knife point.

Kavinsky glanced, lazily, between the two of them, and Adam was struck by the predatory sharpness of his eyes. Like everything else about him could fall into disarray, or be purposefully cultivated into boredom and disdain, but his eyes would never stop finding prey.

It was unnerving. Worse, it was intimidating, and Adam knew it was _real_. Like if Ronan wasn’t standing where he was standing, Adam would already be on the floor bleeding.

He’d tried to avoid confrontation ever since he’d reached the Academy, and before that, nothing was ever so much a fight as it was a beating.

‘Someone broke the med-scan.’ Proko offered, clearly torn between enjoyment and feigned consternation. The struggle didn’t last long, and he grinned. ‘Someone trying to cover something up.’

Adam understood the implication instantly. Kavinsky suspected, Kavinsky laid blame. It took a few more seconds of staring at them, mustering an expression of faint concern and shock, for the genuine dismay to sink in.

If it was true, Adam couldn’t be tested. Without a test - without _identification_ \- how would he get the thing out?

Worse was Ronan’s reaction. He did move, shifting his weight and tilting his head to the left, but he didn’t bite back. He’d arrived strangely too. Possibly he suspected Adam. Possibly he just foresaw Kavinsky’s response before anyone else had.

‘What’s your point?’

Kavinsky snorted. ‘Wake up, Lynch. He smashed the med-scan to protect himself.’ He punctuated this with a gesture, a finger gun in Adam’s direction, that accompanied the staggering mutiny of Adam’s internal organs.

‘That’s bullshit.’ Ronan sounded so haughtily certain, as though Kavinsky’s mere presumption he could theorise earned an endless amount of derision.

‘Yeah?’ Proko again, jerking one shoulder in what apparently amounted to a gesture. ‘He was alone, right? So a facefucker got him. Now he’s trying to cover it up.’

‘You thick fucking shit. Why wouldn’t he just program the machine to display a clear scan? Why wouldn’t he be in fucking stasis right now?’

The logic was reassuringly sound. Even though Ronan didn’t seem averse to fighting one or both of the soldiers, Adam felt comfortably confident that he didn’t actually believe them.

Kavinsky’s expression hadn’t altered. He didn’t look impressed or convinced, or particularly concerned about Ronan’s disagreement. He was frustratingly difficult to read. Even where there should have been the slight evidence of calculation, reappraisal of the situation, there was something else.

‘Maybe it was you.’ Prokopenko delivered with astounding conviction. ‘Protecting that bitch of a thing you brought back.’

Ronan snarled and took two strides forwards. ‘Talk about her again and I’ll break your goddamn neck.’

His challenge was intercepted by Kavinsky, but Prokopenko hesitated. For the first time, Adam wondered exactly how formidable an opponent Ronan was, in order to not only alarm one soldier but to keep two in check by his mere presence.

Kavinsky would have killed Adam, or come close to it. Adam could tell by the controlled reluctance to drop the issue, the lingering disappointment. He wanted Adam dead, and there was dread in Adam’s stomach warning him he didn’t just have aliens to blame.

He could tell by the way Kavinsky looked at Ronan as much as by the way Kavinsky looked at him. The way that Ronan’s increased proximity to Kavinsky heightened the tension in the room by several notches. The way that Adam was again unexpectedly fixated by the bruises on Ronan’s face, and the broken line of Kavinsky’s nose, and the unpleasant, sharp awareness that they’ve fought.

He felt like a prop in a play that was very decidedly not about him.

When they slunk out, like wolves foiled in the hunt, Adam leaned on the table. He hadn’t even been part of the conversation, part of the conflict. It felt terrifyingly familiar.

Ronan stirred a few seconds later, and he turned to survey his handiwork with a critical eye.

Adam couldn’t ask what the point was. An alibi, possibly. Or just an additional challenge for Kavinsky and his minion to surmount if they attacked. Possibly Ronan’s only method of expressing the extent of his inner turmoil without actually throwing a punch.

Adam left it all. He went back to Noah’s skin cells.

 

 

 

Ronan was with him until he finished. He didn’t attempt to tidy up, or make conversation. He just sat on the table and stared at the door.

Adam’s chest offered a regular, unsubtle pang of discomfort.

The reality set in rapidly, and he didn’t have the will to argue when Ronan slid off the table to escort him out.

Demeaning, sure. But there was less appeal in an impending demise that involved being gutted by Kavinsky than being, well, gutted by an alien.

They reached Adam’s door first. Ronan didn’t stop, and Adam knew, fundamentally, he couldn’t keep going. He appreciated the way Ronan turned and stared at him, with intentional disregard for the facts.

He couldn’t go. He had to wait it out, if he could. Locked up, ideally. If he could seal the circulation vents, his room would be alright. The brute strength of the thing was an issue for containing it, but…

There was the scalpel up his sleeve. It wouldn’t be pretty, but… Jesus. This was the Henrietta. Gansey’s ship. Gansey’s crew.

Adam entered his code, but Ronan was still there, very there, and it was always difficult to turn his back to Ronan.

‘Parrish.’ Ronan sounded amused. Inappropriately amused.

‘What?’ The door slid open, and Adam tried hard not to care that he was being mocked.

‘That’s very noble and all -’ Ronan continued lightly, ‘- but you can’t seriously expect Gansey to just let you die.’

Gansey. _Gansey_. Solver of problems. Ronan must have told him, or maybe Kavinsky had, before his little vendetta rendezvous. This introduced a tasteful new element of nausea to Adam’s discomfort.

He didn’t bother to answer, but he foolishly didn’t move either, and that was all Ronan needed as encouragement.

‘Give it an hour or so. The nerd squad will sort a safe stasis pod.’ He said breezily. ‘You can sleep on the sofa.’

There was no logic to support that conclusion, and his added comment was more of an instruction than an invitation.

Adam blinked, slowly, pooling his strength. How long had the day been? Roughly nineteen hours awake, from stasis to now, with a brief interlude of unconsciousness thrown in for good measure, and however readily that might have screwed up his functional capacity.

‘It’s not safe.’ He implements finally. ‘The… the _girl_ , Ronan.’

He’s not an idiot. Ronan wouldn’t have ensured the girl’s security anywhere but within his own closely guarded fortress. And Ronan’s not likely to drag Adam into the room as well, extending hospitality to the damn alien threat.

Ronan, as a matter of fact, disagreed.

‘Because it’s much smarter to let the damn thing kill you at any moment and escape.’ He remarked sarcastically. ‘It’s not like the only sensible weapons of defence, and the only sane person to wield them will be in there.’

He pointed down the hall.

 _Actually_ , Adam cautiously noticed, _Ronan’s taking the whole thing fairly well._

The door to his room slid shut. Adam sighed.

He followed Ronan further down the corridor.

 

 

 

He’d always been slightly, _slightly_ , fascinated with the quarters arrangement. Not for any rational reason. It was mostly to do with Gansey and Ronan, but even Henry, to a degree.

That was the pattern.

Gansey, Ronan, Henry, Noah, Blue, Adam.

Gansey’s room was the first in the corridor. A long way up, closer to the bridge than the others. Obviously, with intervening corridors and rooms, but the point was obvious. Gansey’s ship.

What had always been peculiarly intriguing to Adam was that Ronan had chosen the room next to his. By choice. Immediately, Ronan had decided that out of all the rooms he had available to him (all inherently identical), he would rather be as close to Gansey as possible.

It was understandable after witnessing any interaction between them.

Ronan loved Gansey, in the way someone loved the only person who turned them back into themselves, a self they didn’t hate after so long thinking that they did.

And Gansey loved him back, the way crazy people sometimes love even crazier people. The way only Gansey could love someone, probably.

Adam didn’t know. The words were mostly Blue’s. But he saw it.

Henry had chosen the room just next to their rooms, and for anyone else this might have been awkward politeness, but with Henry it very clearly wasn’t, because he just didn’t go for that kind of thing.

They gravitated to each other, so permanently and unaffectedly it was almost charming.

Ronan had locked down his quarters, so it took a significant quantity of console wrestling to get the door open, and he promptly repeated the procedure on the other side to seal them in. Adam tried not to dwell on the impossibility of a speedy escape from a hatching alien.

Ronan’s room was… strange. His bed was always unmade, and yet somehow more comfortable looking than anything else on the ship. He collected things, too. Like Gansey, but with significantly less academic curiosity and much more kleptomania.

There were a lot of small carved things around. Runes on rocks and trees, little statues, spears and small knives. Objects that looked surreal, that glowed, or made noise, or moved. A few books, scattered here and there. What Ronan had, Adam had already borrowed and read. Most of them came from his childhood. There were a few odd looking musical instruments. A piece of ice suspended, unmelting, from the ceiling. Threads from alien plant or animal fibres. Domestic things, too. Strange eating, cooking, or gardening implements, essentially interchangeable. Puzzles games, carved or imbued with odd physical properties. Many of the written things - pages or leaves or carvings that arguably contained texts - he allowed Gansey or Adam to have. He’d bring them onboard, often without mentioning them, and eventually just hand them over. Some of the time he worked out a pattern to them.

He liked shiny things especially, in a low-key way. Most of them went into small piles. Pebbles. Glass. Crystals. Gemstones. Polished or unpolished, remarkable or unremarkable to anyone who wasn’t Ronan.

One of Ronan’s guns (the small one) was on a high bookshelf. He lifted it down and placed it on the shelf behind the bed.

The little girl was hidden, somewhere, in amongst the things.

She didn’t appear until Ronan dropped onto the bed and said ‘Opal?’ He pointed accusingly at Adam. ‘Parrish is hungry.’

There was a flash of movement in between clothing and pottery, and a little head popped out.

‘Opal’s her name?’ Adam asked unwittingly, and Ronan shrugged.

‘No idea. That’s all she said.’

Adam surveyed the geological carnage vaguely. ‘Right.’

Opal had apparently deemed him worthy of generosity, and emerged to bestow a stack of dehydrated food upon him.

He settled onto the bed, and Opal cheerfully crept away, back into some well disguised cubby made out of Ronan’s stuff.

He was hungry, painfully hungry, but the thought of eating made him feel sick. There was too much pressure, inside his chest. Muscle pain radiating outwards.

He should have told Ronan. Then he never would have let Adam in.

That wasn’t true. Ronan hadn’t let him in because he was _safe_.

The room was mostly dark, but Adam could still see Ronan’s face. He gave up pretending to consider the food in favour of watching Ronan lie there, blinking heavy lidded eyes and shaking his head very gently to stave off sleep.

He waited quietly, possibly a long time, until Ronan’s eyes stayed closed before he murmured.

‘Hey.’

Ronan’s eyelashes flickered. Primary acknowledgement was in the form of a low grumble.

‘How’s your stomach?’

It felt like a strange question to verbalise, which was why Adam had waited. It wasn’t meant to be, but he knew it was. Knew the innate oddness of the few moments he’d clamped his hands down on Ronan in some completely illogical attempt to keep his stomach from being burnt through like… like Engle’s face.

Ronan tried and failed to open his eyes, and mumbled; ‘Mmmngh.’

It was either affirmative or questioning, but Adam didn’t know what either option actually represented. He leaned over and lifted the hem of Ronan’s shirt up.

There was… nothing… wrong with Ronan’s skin. It wasn’t even slightly pink. Adam felt mildly impressed by his own quick thinking. He was also unhelpfully impressed by the unblemished attractiveness of Ronan’s abdomen. 

Ronan mumbled another incoherent observation, and one of his hands swatted Adam’s, catching and dragging it to the mattress.

Adam concluded his statement had been something similar to “Go the fuck to sleep.”

He didn’t know what Gansey was doing, but he doubted it would be effective. And Ronan’s resistance was hardly unusual, given that Adam hadn’t shared the details about pain and near-certainty he was doomed.

He settled, noncommittally, onto his side, leaving his hand loosely pinned in Ronan’s grasp. It wasn’t as though he didn’t know Ronan’s security codes. He’d wait until Ronan was asleep before he left.


	11. *Maniacal laughing*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made a whole bunch of continuity errors in the last chapter but hopefully most of them are fixed now :D And I feel the need to share that I met a kid joining the army the other day and he was too pretty for it. He had a buzzcut and massive eyes and my brain went 'baby Ronan'. I sanction corps cadet rebel Ronan.

It wasn’t long before Adam woke up. Ronan was still lying in the same position, hand linked with Adam’s, breathing softly. Adam had moved, but mainly as he’d struggled to wake.

The pain was shockingly worse. It took his breath away, before he’d even recovered the hazy recognition of what it _was_.

He disentangled his fingers from Ronan’s and crawled off the bed, dragging short, stuttered breaths through his teeth.

 _Christ_. It hurt so much. He couldn’t _think_. He was sweating, nauseous. His eyes were watering.

Ronan curled his palm closed, undisturbed.

If Adam woke him, Ronan would… panic, possibly. He’d definitely try to fix it instead of grabbing the girl and getting out. He wouldn’t _leave_.

Adam reached for the gun, clutching the front of his shirt. He wished he’d changed. Showered. He wished he didn’t feel dizzy and fractured and insensible.

He didn’t know how to use it. There was probably a safety, and he couldn’t see it in the dark. He didn’t even know if it was gunpowder or plasma.

He stepped towards the door, accidentally kicking something across the floor with a quiet rattle.

He could see the console. He could remember Ronan’s codes. He couldn’t stay in this room with Ronan sleeping and Opal hidden somewhere and his chest cramping like he was out of time, _jesus christ, he was out of time, he couldn’t get out_.

He fumbled with the gun, fingers shaking. It was barely light enough to see, and his vision was blurry and he couldn’t find the safety.

Ronan caught his wrist, unexpectedly close, his arm pressed against Adam’s arm, his shoulder to Adam’s shoulder.

It wasn’t a surprise so much as an obstruction.

Ronan’s grip was loose, but his weight was enough to prevent Adam from resisting. He was trembling, from anger or fear, and within seconds he’d silently managed to push Adam across into the bathroom and slide the door closed.

‘Adam.’ It was barely a whisper, rough and wounded. ‘Adam, don’t.’

The argument caught in Adam’s throat, and he let Ronan take the gun from his fingers.

His answer was scratchy, uncontrolled. ‘I have to kill it.’

‘No. _No_. You don’t know.’

‘It hurts.’ His voice cracked, infuriatingly. ‘It’s happening.’

He drew an uneven breath, and Ronan’s hands slid up his arms. ‘No.’

It really did hurt. Like his heart was being squeezed and his muscles were searing and his breastbone and ribs were being bent. He let his damp forehead fall against Ronan’s shoulder, mumbling a plea for him to leave.

Ronan repeated; ‘No. _No_.’

‘Just let go.’ Adam didn’t struggle, and Ronan didn’t release him. ‘Just _go_.’

He felt Ronan’s nose brushing through his hair, and then Ronan’s mouth pressing against his temple, and whined.

‘Ro.’ _Forgive me_. ‘Ronan.’

He wished he was- He wished he could have been more like Gansey. More _human_.

‘Let me look.’ Ronan demanded. ‘There’s gotta be… _something_ , goddammit.’

There was anger in the way his hands shook against Adam’s skin, not letting himself clutch or bruise. Adam couldn’t understand how he’d refused to accept it, still wouldn’t accept it. If Adam died here, _now_ , he couldn’t fathom what Ronan would do. What it would do to Ronan.

He let his head drop back, and Ronan leaned for the console by the door. The light stung, briefly, but it hurt his pride more.

He would have preferred to die with… with some dignity left, if that was even remotely possible. Not shaking and sweating and crying.

Ronan pulled the hem of his shirt, and Adam obliged by raising his arms weakly.

Ronan’s hiss was enough to warn him that there were bruises before the shirt was off his head. He glanced down, flinching from fresh ripples of pain. There was a circular bruise just right of his heart, nearly the size of a golf ball, and radiating patches of discoloured skin, black-blue, green-black, yellow.

There was silence except for the sound of Ronan exhaling through his teeth. Adam wanted to whimper, sob if he had to, anything which might have relieved some of the pain, but he suppressed it. There wasn’t a way out. There wasn’t a way to fix this.

Ronan’s fingers grazed the edges of the bruise very lightly, and Adam shivered. The pressure hardly registered, and Ronan was warm, incredibly warm. Adam wished he could curve closer again, wished he could wrap himself in Ronan’s warmth.

Ronan drew back, and Adam forced himself to look up. He expected Ronan’s wrath, even resentment, but not the shadowed thoughtfulness of his continued inspection.

He moved one hand to the curve of Adam’s neck, let the other ghost across the bruise, and frowned gently. ‘Is this… Is this where Kavinsky hit you?’

Adam swallowed uneasily. ‘He didn’t.’

Ronan shook his head. ‘Before. On the ramp.’

It took Adam a few seconds to place the incident. Everything had become a little hazy after he’d fallen. When he’d woken up in the darkness he’d assumed Prokopenko had hit him on the back of the head. And after Carruthers had dragged him out of the floor, he’d struggled to really identify where he was, or what he was supposed to be doing.

He’d known Ronan was around somewhere, but not close enough to offer security. He wouldn’t have been unconscious if Ronan was nearby.

Before darkness, there was the dilapidated ship interior. Separation from Ronan. And the explosion.

Yes, _yes_ , he remembered being hit in the chest.

The memory didn’t carry a sliver of hopefulness with it.

‘It didn’t hurt.’ Adam confessed lowly. ‘He didn’t hit me that hard.’

‘The adrenaline.’ Ronan reminded him softly. ‘He was juiced.’

Adam moved his hand, mechanically, to where Ronan’s rested, feather-light, on his chest.

It was possible, that he wouldn’t have felt it at the time. It was even possible it would hurt this much now.

But surely that was unrealistically hopeful. He shook his head, and felt Ronan’s hands skate up to his shoulders.

‘You’re fine.’ Ronan pulled him closer, urgently. His voice, soft like this, was unexpectedly familiar. ‘You’re okay.’

Adam would have argued with him, if he could focus or speak or _breathe_.

He mumbled syllables instead, into Ronan’s shoulder, his neck, pleading. _Let it go. Let me go_.

‘We’ll find Cheng.’ Ronan murmured. ‘Now. And Helen.’ He moved, turning Adam slightly, reaching for the crowded shelves over his sink. Deodorant, body wash, shampoo, soap, bits and pieces that were half touched and wholly abandoned, tumbling down into the sink, off the counter and onto the floor.

‘Here.’ He produced a narrow tube of silver buttons, and snapped off the top with his thumb.

Suspicion overruled Adam’s longing. ‘Where…?’

Ronan lifted the corner of his mouth. ‘Broken wrist on Vejovis.’ He tipped several of the little silver orbs into Adam’s hand, and picked a few back out, fingernails lightly scratching Adam’s palm.

Adam didn’t remember Vejovis. It must have been before he’d joined the Henrietta. He didn’t risk trying to ask how long ago, and pushed the painkillers into his mouth.

 

Opal was sitting on the bed when they left the bathroom, prodding at the abandoned food. She frowned at Ronan, evidently blaming him for Adam’s shivery distress.

‘C’mon, Opal.’ Ronan kicked over a stack of laundry, searching for a jacket to replace Adam’s shirt. ‘Gotta take Parrish to the doc.’

 

 

 

Ronan explained, in a monosyllabic, non-explanatory kind of way, that Cheng was checking and separating a functional stasis pod. Adam didn’t know if this meant the others weren’t functional (sabotaged, perhaps, like the med-scan), or that Ronan expected the Corps to try and kill him even after he went to sleep.

The separation of Adam’s pod from the others would have required a tedious amount of engineering, but that didn’t stop Ronan fuming about the apparent delay.

Ronan walked close enough to brush against him, never reacting when Adam caught his elbow or shirt to steady himself, and mostly in grim silence.

He suspected Ronan was turning over the probability that there was no infection, and how long to risk leaving Adam out of stasis to find out.

Opal darted along in front of them, scooting a few metres forward and then lagging until they caught up. It would have been rapid progress if Adam hadn’t felt half-dead already. The painkillers took most of the edge off, but the weakness lingered, frailty in his chest and aching breathlessness.

They reached the stasis hold, and Ronan hesitated over the open door.

He made Opal wait behind him, with Adam, while he prowled inside with a hand on the metal rectangle tucked against his hip.

‘Cheng?’

Adam carefully leaned on the doorway. The room was lit, but it was difficult to see beyond the rows of lockers, silent and forlorn without the certain return of their owners.

He guided Opal behind him and followed Ronan anyway, around the edges of lockers and the benches.

Ronan, a few steps ahead of them, stopped. A couple of seconds later he pulled out the gun.

There was light over the silent rows of stasis pods. All of them had been resealed after arrival, but one was open, and it was this that Ronan approached, leaving Adam and Opal under cover of the lockers.

Kavinsky was standing behind it, his own pistol in hand, staring down at something almost entirely concealed from Adam’s sight. He could only see the black sole of a shoe on the floor, a sharp contrast to the smooth pale surface of the pod.

Adam heard Ronan’s gun click, and he swallowed convulsively. _Henry_. God, not Henry. _Why?_ Kavinsky was a _bastard_.

Ronan paused opposite Kavinsky, both of them silent.

‘Fuck.’ Ronan observed, and brutal relief hit Adam like ice water. It couldn’t be Henry. Ronan wouldn’t sound like that, low and cold.

Kavinsky inhaled, and exhaled, and he lifted his eyes.

It was the first time Adam had seen him angry. Actually angry. Not even tinged with smugness or slyness.

He didn’t say anything, just jerked his chin behind himself, and Ronan straightened slightly, before backtracking and looping around the other stasis pods.

Adam saw him kneel, and after a few moments he heard a quiet; ‘Cheng?’

Opal was not impressed with Kavinsky’s presence. She hung back with Adam, critically inspecting the distance between them and Ronan, rising and falling on her toes like she was waiting to run.

It must have been her way of living, for god knew how long. Maybe the whole two months they’d been in stasis to get here.

‘Cheng?’ Ronan’s voice, louder. ‘C’mon man.’

Kavinsky had noticed Adam and Opal, but he hadn’t shown any interest, so Adam edged forwards, risking a glance at the body while Opal was behind him.

It was Jiang. _Jiang_. The front of his shirt was red and ripped, and Adam had a fairly comprehensive view of the inside of his chest. The dizzying smell of blood oozed from him, and Adam stepped back, choking down a reaction.

Finally, Ronan stood up, supporting Henry Cheng. He looked unusually discomposed, and there was a narrow trail of blood down the side of his face.

‘They were attempting to use a stasis pod.’ He reported, touching his face and examining bloodied fingers with a grimace. ‘Of course, I said fine. I assumed he was the one who had been shot. Then… I’m not entirely sure. Oh, my _god_ -’

He’d noticed Jiang, and his face turned an impressive shade of pale green.

‘That son of a bitch.’ Kavinsky answered, voice hard.

Jiang had never been alone on-planet… How had he been infected? How had he covered it up? And was that why Kavinsky had planned for Adam to take the blame?

‘Are you trying-’ Ronan had reached the same conclusion, and he was easily prepared to match Kavinsky’s fury. ‘-to get us all _killed_?’

Kavinsky looked up again, with the first flicker of sardonic amusement.

‘I’m not so _devoted_.’ His gaze scraped over Adam, and Opal half-hidden behind his legs. ‘I was looking for Whelk when I found this shitfight.’

‘Whelk.’ Henry agreed softly, face drained of colour. ‘He was here.’

Kavinsky grinned, triumphant but humourless. ‘I’m gonna kill that fucker.’

Ronan didn’t answer, but he was close enough to let Henry go, and the latter limped over to Adam.

‘Why, Parrish, you look- I can only presume -worse than I do.’ He frowned. ‘Did someone punch you in the head also?’

‘Something like that.’ Adam answered, his voice rasping. ‘Are you alright?’

‘I would enjoy some painkillers.’ Henry admitted. He leaned a little closer. ‘Am I to understand that there is something on the ship with us, at this point?’

Adam fought the urge to move his hand to his chest and nodded mutely.

‘Whelk did this?’ Ronan’s ire was still focused on Kavinsky. ‘The fuck _for_?’

‘Can’t wait to find out.’ Kavinsky didn’t move. ‘I really can’t fucking wait.’

Ronan left him.

‘For fuck’s sake.’ He was scowling, like he couldn’t stand the sight of the three of them. Henry pale and holding his hand to his head with a healthy dose of theatrical flair, Adam hunched over himself weakly, and Opal glaring at Kavinsky as if he was the devil.

At least she had good judgement.

‘Gansey.’ Adam croaked out. ‘And Blue. We need to warn them.’

Henry searched himself and shrugged. ‘I am sans communicator.’ He looked at Adam dubiously. ‘I would suggest the bridge, but…’

Ronan shoved his gun back into his belt, shooting Henry an unnecessarily dark look.

The stasis pod hadn’t slipped Adam’s mind either, but he wasn’t dead yet, and Jiang…

He tried to identify when Jiang would have been infected. Helen could probably tell them. Adam might have been able to, if his brain wasn’t crackling with fatigue and hunger and pain. If it was after Adam had fallen, then maybe he wasn’t hosting an alien embryo, assuming a consistent gestation period.

The smell of the blood and the concept of something gestating under his ribcage made him feel more ill than before, and he staggered backwards.

He couldn’t do anything while Kavinsky was standing in here fuming, anyway, and Ronan wouldn’t leave without him.

One of Ronan’s hands caught his upper arm, steadying him, and the other snatched at Henry. ‘Move your asses. I’m not fucking carrying you.’

 

 

 

Whelk was on the bridge. _Whelk_.

He didn’t acknowledge them as they came in, despite Gansey’s immediate horror in response to Henry’s bloodied forehead and Adam’s near-death pallor.

The pain was simmering, by that point, and Adam detached himself from the group in order to linger by the door, while Gansey made a beeline for Henry. Blue tumbled out of her chair and followed, already primed for an argument.

‘Why would my ship be designed to carry bombs?’ Gansey’s tone remained firmly exasperated, despite grabbing Henry’s jaw with concern. He continued without glancing back at Whelk. ‘You’d need a slower ship, in any case, or you’d risk misfire during FTL.’

‘It will take an age to get a cargo carrier to Terminus, let alone out here.’ Whelk answered, flatly. Adam couldn’t tell if he was pretending not to notice Henry’s face, or pretending to think it was normal. ‘Our best option is to meet them halfway and turn back.’

Ronan didn’t interrupt. He’d taken up a stance next to the navcon, arms crossed, scowling. Opal stood on his foot and clawed her way to eye level with the tabletop.

‘Your best option-’ Gansey corrected. ‘-may well be abandoning this sector entirely.’

He pushed Henry back far enough to raise a bewildered eyebrow at him.

‘This was an act of war against a civilian colony.’ Whelk hissed. ‘And the slaughter of half my squad.’

Gansey finally looked at him, obtaining no answer from Henry’s remarkably placid expression. ‘We have no comprehension of how these lifeforms function. They may not have a concept of war. They may even be acting on pure instinct.’

‘That’s…’ Whelk paused, irritated. ‘…irrelevant. We should liaise with the troop ship.’

Gansey drew his shoulders back and assumed his sternest expression. ‘My crew has already been endangered by the recklessness of the Corps. I won’t participate in another-’

The door opened, and Adam flinched unthinkingly.

The new onboard alien was unlikely to have adapted so well to its environment, but the actual intruder still made Adam want to slink into a corner.

‘I agree with Dick.’ Kavinsky announced coolly.

Adam saw Ronan’s hand rest on Opal’s head, firmly pushing her back below the edge of the navcon. Gansey looked thoroughly disconcerted. Whelk looked appropriately aggravated.

Gansey teeth hovered over his bottom lip, uncertain of whether to withdraw his previous statement. Any plan sanctioned by Kavinsky, in Gansey’s eyes, must have been the wrong one.

‘Sergeant Kavinsky.’ Whelk delivered stonily. ‘We need reinforcements.’

Kavinsky had passed Adam, striding closer to the navcon, but Adam could practically hear him grinning. ‘No fucking shit.’

Ronan signalled with his free hand. _Get out_. Blue noted the motion and looked at Adam curiously, but Henry was already edging towards the door, on the verge of a dramatic swoon.

With Noah shut down, they needed Blue on the bridge, to get them out of orbit. Ronan could do it, if he wasn’t too busy fighting off Kavinsky. But if Blue went with Henry to find Helen, they’d be traversing an alien infested ship without protection.

If Ronan went to warn Helen, he’d be leaving Gansey undefended on the bridge with Kavinsky.

If Adam went, there was no guarantee he’d actually get anywhere. He could wind up dead from the embryo, from the hatched alien, or from an unmediated encounter with one of Kavinsky’s soldiers.

None of those scenarios were exactly appealing.

‘Not urgent though, is it?’ Kavinsky slammed his hands onto the navcon, and his shoulders rose like hackles. ‘There’s no way those fuckers can get off planet, is there?’

Gansey circled the navcon until he was almost at Ronan’s shoulder, but Ronan was watching Kavinsky, tense with anticipation. Opal pulled at the back off his jeans, demanding, exhorting.

’It’s hard to say, without the medical scanner.’ Whelk noted carefully. He was watching Kavinsky warily, now, as though the penny was halfway dropped. ‘Certain precautions should be taken.’

‘Precautions.’ Kavinsky snorted. ‘Precautions, huh?’ He thumped one fist on the navcon, and Ronan took a step back, pushing Opal behind him and gesturing for Gansey to copy.

‘More guns, huh? More soldiers?’ He punctuated every question with the slam of his fist on the table. ‘More _fodder_. For your _fucking_. _Science_. _Experiments_?’

Adam heard the glass crack. Whelk had backed up, expression slipping into poorly disguised alarm.

There was realisation dawning on Gansey’s face in time with Adam’s sudden understanding. He looked from Ronan to Kavinsky to Whelk.

_It had never been a settlement colony._

Whelk muttered; ’You’re out of line.’

‘You set us up.’ Kavinsky snarled. ‘You piece of shit motherfucker you _set my people up_.’

He lunged for Whelk.


	12. Field, tenor, mode of vengeance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that took so long.

It wasn’t a fair fight. Kavinsky easily deflected Whelk’s attempt to pull a pistol on him, and wrestled him into a headlock.

There were a few underhanded blows along the way. Kavinsky broke Whelk’s nose and damn near snapped his wrist, but Whelk wasn’t above making a mean jab to the stomach or below the belt.

When Kavinsky finally slammed Whelk face first onto the navcon, Gansey flinched, but he didn’t try to intervene. Ronan wouldn’t have let him, but Gansey was already white as a sheet, shocked into silence by the extent of Whelk’s treachery.

‘You let it on the ship.’ Kavinsky grunted, pinning Whelk with his weight. ‘What’s your genius fucking plan now, huh?’

‘Ronan?’ Gansey turned wide eyes on him, then Cheng, Adam. ‘What happened?’

Henry still looked moderately dazed, but unwilling to answer. Adam just nodded vacantly.

‘There’s only one.’ Whelk wheezed. ‘You can hunt it down.’

Kavinsky spat; ‘With _what_? Five soldiers and a few pistols?’

Plasma rounds could put a hole in the hull, and destroy the ship, but then again, so could alien blood. They were screwed unless they found a way to get rid of it without making it bleed.

‘What was this place?’ Gansey asked, struggling to control his tone. ‘What were they doing?’

Whelk didn’t respond until Kavinsky leaned on him and he groaned.

‘It was- ah, a military installation. They found a local species- ugh… with a genetic hybrid composition.’

‘The fuck does that mean?’ Kavinsky glanced at Ronan, then sideways towards Parrish.

Adam’s expression was a mask. ‘They bred them from humans. Intentionally.’

Kavinsky curled a lip. ‘So they made them.’ He summarised grimly, twisting Whelk’s arm. ‘And big fucking surprise, they couldn’t fucking control them.’

‘There’s one on the ship.’ Blue pointed out flatly. ‘How?’

Gansey looked at Adam, a, single, momentary glance that literally everyone in the room must have noticed.

‘Jiang was a carrier.’ Ronan explained, seething. ‘Whelk was trying to put him in stasis when the bug hatched, and he took Cheng out for good measure.’

It was sinking in. Ronan could see the horror disguised under Gansey’s self-restraint. His immediate thoughts of Helen, Noah. The ship.

Blue just looked furious.

Whelk was still talking, mumbling muffled sentences to Kavinsky. Whatever he said made the psychopath grin, and Ronan didn’t feel a whole lot more comfortable with that reaction than his fury.

‘The cargo ship.’ Gansey interjected. ’With the missiles… That’s a trap?’

Kavinsky scoffed. ‘Only if you’re not suicidal.’

Whelk would have attempted to preserve the colony… save the specimens. That was probably why he hadn’t sacrificed Jiang.

Abruptly, Kavinsky released Whelk, propelling him a few feet back from the table. He was bloodied and unsteady, but Ronan curled fingers around his gun anyway. He didn’t trust Whelk, but he sure as hell didn’t trust Kavinsky.

Whelk was looking to his sergeant, imploringly, and Ronan didn’t like it.

Kavinsky pulled his gun before Ronan could react. He wasn’t sure he had slower reflexes… it was more that he genuinely didn’t expect Kavinsky to be pointing the gun at _him_ instead of literally anyone else in the room.

He didn’t say anything, even though he knew Gansey had gone still with fear, and Whelk was frozen too, wearing a look of fleeting hopefulness, and the only two people in the room who seemed capable of moving and breathing were him and Kavinsky.

It wasn’t a fight. Ronan let Kavinsky’s eyes scrape over him, flatly curious, deplorably familiar. There was a way Kavinsky looked when he dealt with insiders, and that was always how he’d looked at Ronan.

When they’d been cadets, Gansey had freely admitted that it unnerved him, and Ronan had learned to have a similar reaction, but it felt… now it felt like a tenuous link to a buried history. Not one that Ronan particularly wanted to unearth, but it was still there.

‘I take the ship.’ Kavinsky suggested calmly. ‘And the Lieutenant will let me kill you all however I want. Solid offer, don’t you think, Lynch?’

‘Solid.’ Ronan countered mockingly. ‘Didn’t know you needed permission, K. Bending to authority, after all these years?’

He watched the grin sear across Kavinsky’s features, and there was an answering spark of satisfaction in his veins.

Kavinsky shot Whelk in the throat.

 

The gunshot startled Gansey, and even though he must have seen the change in the direction of the gun Ronan still felt him clutching frantically at an arm.

It took Whelk a moment to fold up and drop to the ground. The blood was copious, instantly sheeting down his neck and the front of his shirt and his khaki jacket. Ronan twisted over Opal, pushing her away so she was nearer to Gansey and didn’t have a view past the navcon.

It didn’t kill him immediately, either. Ronan wasn’t certain how precise Kavinsky’s aim had been, but he’d fired from nearby, and it took longer than expected for Whelk’s choking noises to subside.

Kavinsky waited, standing over him, the gun loose in his hand.

When Whelk shuddered and went still, Kavinsky captioned the moment with a mildly amused; ‘Prick.’

The general atmosphere of stunned horror notwithstanding, Ronan felt relieved. It was damn near impossible to manage Kavinsky without fatalities, let alone Kavinsky and some other crazy asshole who was under the misguided impression he was in charge.

The relief didn’t last for long. Kavinsky had swiftly turned his attention to the surviving occupants of the room.

Specifically, Parrish.

He’d shifted his hatred from Gansey to Adam with incredible efficiency. Ronan couldn’t- he didn’t _want_ to understand it.

Pushing for the medical scans had been the first warning.

Then they’d found the broken machine, and he’d lit up, just burned with the excitement of it, and Ronan had known, known with uncompromising certainty that Kavinsky would target Adam.

Adam, because he’d agreed to accompany the soldiers to the planet. Adam, because he looked at Kavinsky without fear.

Adam, because of the way he was, because of the way Ronan was around him.

Ronan’s compulsion to protect Adam was indescribable. It had always existed, but with Kavinsky everything was magnified. As careless and callous as Kavinsky was, his knowledge of how to damage people was unmatched.

The fact that Adam was stronger than most only made it worse. Kavinsky would find more sport in trying to break him, and Ronan couldn’t risk it.

Kavinsky hadn’t lifted the gun, but he was challenging Adam, and Adam responded. He lifted his chin, acceptance rather than defiance, and refused to cower.

Whelk was the beginning, the scent of blood, and Ronan didn’t doubt Kavinsky was willing, probably eager to kill again. Ronan had provoked him to it, anyway, how could it be surprising?

But he wouldn’t waste Parrish on a single bullet.

He’d murdered his superior officer, but his dogs would defend him from the consequences. Despite the aliens, and in spite of Whelk, Kavinsky was still the most significant threat to the survival of the crew.

Ronan would have to kill him.

And for Adam, he would.

The moment (mere seconds) shivered past, and Kavinsky tucked the gun away.

‘What the fuck do we do now?’

After a brief struggle to compartmentalise, Gansey breathlessly supplied; ‘We have to find the others.’

‘If you have any left.’ Ronan directed at Kavinsky.

He shrugged, unbothered. ‘Proko. Brand, Lee, Rutherford. Skov, when he stops being a pussy.’

Gansey’s expression slipped toward panic again. ‘Oh god, _Helen_.’

Kavinsky quirked an eyebrow. ‘ _She’s_ with the infantry. She’ll survive longer than you.’

‘How do we kill the alien?’ Ronan interrupted sharply. ‘We can’t just shoot the bastard.’

There was silence. Henry had returned to an unhealthy colour scheme and was leaning heavily on the wall. Parrish looked exhausted, wary of the new corpse, but still exerting enough self-control to pat Henry’s shoulder.

Blue was glowering in an angry, alarmed manner, and Opal was inspecting the room with the air of someone looking for a quick exit.

‘We’ve got cattle-prods.’ Kavinsky said. ‘For non-hostiles. One of your bitches can up the voltage to make them useful.’

Gansey grimaced and Blue’s glower intensified.

‘We should try to drive it into an airlock.’ Adam suggested suddenly. ‘Ejecting it into space wouldn’t risk damaging the ship.’

‘Alright.’ Gansey nodded anxiously. ‘Okay.’

‘The mess store is sealed.’ Adam continued. ‘It’s probably the most defensible area on the ship.’

It took Ronan a couple of moments to realise this comment was directed at him.

Opal. _Jesus_. Ronan needed to get her somewhere safe. Gansey, too. Parrish, if he’d- but he wouldn’t, because that would be too fucking easy.

‘We should move Noah in there.’ Adam advised lowly. ‘He can operate the ship unassisted.’

Gansey nodded, despite a deepening frown. ‘Can we move him? I mean… Is it safe?’

‘We can use the motion trackers off the rifles.’ Henry recommended, still staring at his shoes.

‘The aliens on-planet evaded them.’ Ronan pointed out. ‘And this thing is, what? Two hours old? How fast can it be moving?’

‘It’s a hybrid.’ Adam repeated. ‘Genetic malleability makes it unpredictable. And the exoskeleton would need to grow quickly after the… hatching.’

Ronan scowled. ‘Gross.’

‘You just gonna fucking talk?’ Kavinsky asked impatiently.

‘No. We’ll go to the medical bay, then get Noah.’

‘We can sweep the ship, bow to stern.’ Kavinsky urged. ‘Get the others when we pass them.’

‘We can’t push it to the stern.’ Ronan snapped. ‘It’ll go down into the hangar and we’ll never find it.’

‘The airlocks are halfway to the stern.’ Gansey confirmed. ‘We’d need to find it and trap it in the middle of one of the corridors. And we don’t know _where_ it is.’

‘Or where to start.’ Ronan added.

‘Whatever, dickheads. I’m getting my people.’ Kavinsky shrugged and started for the door. Ronan followed automatically, close enough to intervene if Kavinsky tried anything while passing Parrish.

 

 

 

They made it to the medical bay unscathed, but Helen was not pleased to hear the developments, or to be confronted with Henry’s head wound. Ronan itched to throw her at Parrish, demand an explanation, but he didn’t allow himself even a glance.

Aside from Ronan and Kavinsky, Rutherford and Lee were the only ones carrying non-plasma weaponry (that wouldn’t, like the rocket launcher, blow out a massive section of the ship). That gave them barely enough firepower to form four search teams, and Ronan was pretty dubious about their odds.

They took medical supplies and the still heavily-sedated Skov to the mess hall, and after scouting the corners for baby aliens, they opened the store.

It wasn’t big, especially not with a fairly full stock of food, but Ronan coaxed Opal in with sweet treats.

Helen was sentenced to confinement, too, as she still had Skov to attend to, and Henry, enthusiastically pushed inside by Gansey.

Ronan looked at Adam, and he looked back, expressionless. Unyielding. The painkillers must have helped, because he was standing straighter, finally, breathing normally.

_God fucking dammit._

Gansey, too, looked at Adam. Then at Ronan, even though there wasn’t a chance in hell he’d hide.

Ronan frowned back at him. If anything, surely their Captain was the most necessary to preserve. Noah could pilot the ship, once they’d retrieved him from the engineering hold. Henry could try to repair any structural damage to the ship. Helen could try to fix any damage to the crew.

Opal could… eat. And Skov, if he ever woke up, could arguably shoot at shit.

Gansey could lead. Take them back to Terminus and ditch the Corps.

Gansey foolishly glanced at Blue and she grew three times her size in a heartbeat. ‘Don’t even _think_ about it.’

He shrugged uneasily. ‘You’re our pilot -’

‘You are not _benching_ me.’

Ronan retreated, and found himself alongside Parrish in a debate with Kavinsky’s soldiers.

‘ _That’s_ the plan?’ Proko protested.

‘You got a better fucking idea?’ Kavinsky replied.

Proko shrugged and went back to cleaning his nails with a penknife. ‘Jumping straight into space, Sarge.’

Someone snickered. Even Adam smirked faintly.

‘Proko and Lee will come up from the stern on starboard, and I’ll meet them halfway with Brand. Lynch and Parrish will take stern on port, and Rutherford and those idiots from the bow.’

‘Can we take it?’ Lee asked evenly.

‘Not a fucking chance.’ Kavinsky grinned. ‘But we can die trying.’

‘It shouldn’t be at full strength yet.’ Adam interjected softly. ‘If we can push it into an airlock we’ll be clear.’

‘And Whelk?’ Lee inquired, still steady. ‘What’s the word we pass back to the Corps?’

‘Valiant death.’ Kavinsky gestured theatrically. ‘Being all… fuckin’ heroic or some shit.’

There was a general nod of approval. Gansey and Blue joined the circle.

Behind them, Ronan saw Helen reach for the internal console, and Opal’s distracted, food-smeared face as the door slid shut.

 

 

 

Getting from the mess to the stern was troubling enough. Ronan preferred to travel back to the bow with Gansey and Blue, along with Rutherford, before branching off down the port corridor with Parrish. It added greater distance, but the threat remained the same, so Ronan didn’t pay it much heed.

They could have gone through the hangar, but the stern entry was at the bottom of a stairway, and the port entry opened onto the overseeing platform, so the descent and re-ascent would have been unnecessarily time consuming.

Ronan, therefore, had the opportunity to watch Gansey worry about the approaching possibility of impending disaster. Unfortunately it also gave Gansey an opportunity to panic about Kavinsky. And Ronan. And some sick and twisted idea he had in his head which seemed to involve both of them.

‘We can’t trust him.’ Gansey whispered, glancing suspiciously at Rutherford (who frankly had bigger and more sensible concerns).

‘I don’t _trust_ him.’ Ronan responded loudly, scowling. He wasn’t a _moron_. ’He’s an asset so long as we’re fighting a goddamn killer alien.’

‘He just _shot_ a man, Ronan.’

‘ _Whelk_ , Gansey. The asshole who sent _Helen_ , and _Noah_ , and _Adam_ into a deathtrap.’ Ronan hissed. ‘He _knew_ what was down there.’

‘I know.’ Gansey was distraught. ‘I know that.’

‘Just- Jesus, just focus on staying alive. We’ll deal with this shit when we’re not about to die.’

‘ _Ronan_.’

‘ _Gansey_.’

Gansey glanced over his shoulder again, but the change in his expression warned Ronan that he wasn’t looking at Rutherford.

Inevitably, it would be Parrish.

 

 

 

Noah had coughed up the truth first.

Admittedly, Ronan had never asked. Never asked, never mentioned, never even looked inquisitive.

He wasn’t even sure Gansey knew. Adam had been the epitome of “privacy” when he’d first joined the ship, and even though there must have been disclosure clauses, for Gansey to take on someone so inexperienced (fresh out of the Academy), Ronan was never sure how extensive they were.

It wasn’t unusual for Gansey to be as protective of Parrish as he was, because it wasn’t unusual for Gansey to _be_ protective. It was infuriating, definitely, but not odd. It didn’t mean that he knew anything at the time, no matter how much he intervened in Ronan’s rants and complaints.

The remarkable part was that Parrish never backed down. He never needed Gansey’s protection, and he never took Ronan’s bullshit. He wanted on the ship, and he was staying on the ship. That was the fact of it, and Lynch be damned.

There was so much fucking evidence. His hearing. His silence. His aversion to proximity.

The initial assumption was that he’d blown out his hearing with some stupid experiment. He was on Rhea, and he’d studied science. He was even obsessive about processing all their data, staying in the laboratory, generally being a reclusive mad scientist _type_.

It didn’t explain the obvious discomfort about his quarters, or anyone else’s, or the mess, or the engineering section, or anything that wasn’t the lab or the Bridge. He didn’t like sharing space, or… conversation, particularly.And if he wasn’t wearing his favoured coveralls, there were other ways he chose to conceal his skin.

 

Noah had been playing cards with Ronan one evening (post-Neuss, pre-Barafu), and when Parrish had passed through he’d whispered; ‘Did you know he’s from Invidia?’

And it had all started to make sense.

Invidia was an old, miserable mining colony, somehow still in existence despite the population stripping the contents of the planet they’d occupied. People on Invidia attempted to survive by scraping the minuscule remnants of precious metals from their barren tunnels and pits, violently quarrelling over them and, according to rumour, eating their pets. Most people only succeeded (in the broadest definition of the word) by carving out a niche for themselves, like producing booze, or deformed but edible produce, or smuggling humans off-planet in the cargo holds of mining ships. The rest could only hope to steal from the successful ones.

Ronan didn’t know where Adam had fallen on that continuum, or how he got out.

He suspected that the reason Parrish couldn’t face being alone with, or even _near_ other peoples’ stuff, was because on Invidia that was a good way to get yourself whipped to death for theft.

He knew (from Noah, who had probably stolen the knowledge in the first place), that Adam’s hearing loss had been the result of violence.

In worse moments he had imagined how it happened.

Occasionally he allowed himself to consider the option of travelling to Invidia. Alone. Finding whoever was responsible and taking them apart. It took him nearer to Kavinsky’s mindset than he ever got otherwise, but he struggled to resist the idea.

Vengeance. Enacted on the person who had harmed Adam.

And closure. To know if… if it was out of the realms of possibility that Adam could ever trust anyone… ever trust _Ronan_ enough.

He’d tried to accept it. Fought to accept it. If it had been complete disinterest, he would have been fine. But always, always, there was the tantalising knowledge, the paralysing awareness that Adam could want him. _Had_ wanted him.

Adam just couldn’t love him.


	13. There isn't a single part of this plan that makes sense or will work.

‘This is a bad idea.’ Adam observed quietly.

He was leaning against the door to the hangar. Fully leaning, like he’d lost the will to stand up. He looked a mess. Hair tangled and dark with grime and sweat, eyes bruised with fatigue, lips a thin line.

Ronan checked the magazine in the pistol and re-set it. ‘It was your suggestion.’

‘Yes.’ Adam acknowledged, lifting one corner of his mouth.

Ronan laughed, flatly. ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’

‘You’re the one with the gun.’ Adam reminded him. ‘I’m just fodder.’

‘Yeah.’ Ronan turned the weapon over in his palm. ‘You walk through the door, and when it starts to eat you I’ll shoot it.’

‘Ha.’

The stasis room was the first accessible to their end of the corridor.

Adam opened it, his fingers slow on the console. ‘We don’t even have comms.’

Ronan navigated inside, leaving Adam to guard the door. “Guard” the door, meaning, to linger beside it looking doubtful and wry.

‘Missing the scintillating conversation?’ Ronan queried, skirting the lockers, the benches.

The room was still bright. Jiang was still dead. Very dead. Obviously, gapingly dead.

Ronan lost sight of Parrish as he ventured further into the room, but he could still hear him, huffing a laugh and then a muted response; ‘I’ve never before encountered such intellect.’

‘I’ll bet.’ Ronan murmured, and then, when Adam didn’t reply, louder. ‘Not even Rhea could produce minds of that calibre.’

Adam scoffed, more to signal his presence than his amusement. ‘They can only aspire to such a pinnacle.’

There was nothing beyond the stasis pods, even the far ones, and nothing hiding in the narrow avenues between the lockers. Ronan did a circuit and wandered back to Adam.

‘Nothing.’ He declared grandly. ‘We live to face more traumatic experiences.’

Adam opened his mouth, said nothing, and closed it again.

They sealed the door from the corridor. It wouldn’t prevent the alien from entering the room, as Parrish all-too-keenly pointed out, but it seemed like some kind of effort was necessary.

‘Next.’

’Training room.’ Ronan gestured. Or it had been. Nobody on the Henrietta really trained, exactly. Sometimes Ronan played darts in there, but mostly at this stage he just used it as storage for his older or bigger collected objects.

The boxes and shelves were clustered around the edges of the room, and Adam followed him inside, both of them completing a brisk semi-circle and meeting against the far wall.

‘What are you going to do with all this stuff?’ Adam asked softly, leaning over a crate of immense seashells. Some of them spiralled, some of them twisted like driftwood, others as distinct as the shape of a fortress or an opera house. All of them were big enough to fit a labrador. Ronan had seen the occupied shells on that planet - _Anga_ \- and the creatures inside had been formidable.

‘Keep it.’ He grunted firmly.

Adam continued onwards, examining some kind of idol, stitched from layers upon layers of rough, coloured fabric. It was another sea creature, from the same planet, something vaguely similar to an Earth octopus but mostly reminiscent of a Lovecraftian horror creature.

‘You could archive it.’ Adam prodded a tentacle cautiously. ‘Or let Gansey archive it.’

‘It’s mine.’ Ronan answered.

Adam smiled.

Gansey had used the empty torpedo bay as the original Archive, but eventually the collection had spread, into a briefing room and an empty armoury, and anywhere else Gansey found room. The only reason it hadn’t taken over the medical bay was because Helen reserved a claim on the room whenever she was onboard.

They left the training room, and moved to Adam’s laboratory.

‘You know Gansey’s going to have to systematically check everything in the Archive, now.’ Ronan said, nudging a path through the debris around the work table. There weren’t hidden areas in here, either, unless the narrow cupboards counted.

Adam glanced across the room at him, confusion clearing as he understood the Corps would be searching the numerous designated storage areas. ‘D’you think Kavinsky will mess with anything?’

Ronan snorted. ‘That’s all he does.’

There was a pause. Ronan assumed Adam was working through the absurd amount of time it would take him and Gansey to ensure nothing was missing or broken or out of place from the whole collection…

‘I hate him.’ Parrish remarked, with detached surprise.

Ronan blinked a few rapid times, examining an open drawer. ‘K? He’s a bastard.’

‘I hate how he looks at you.’ Adam seemed intrigued by the sensation. He methodically replaced items in their rightful places as he spoke.

‘He wants to kill me.’ Ronan said mechanically.

Parrish’s voice was a murmur, blunt. ‘That’s not what he wants.’

Ronan shrugged, helplessly searching for a response slightly more sophisticated than a disconcerted stare. Adam turned towards the exit, and Ronan had to pause to gather his wits before he followed.

He wanted to say _“He’s crazy”_ but it wasn’t enough. He thought about asking _“What’s that supposed to mean?”_ and rejected it immediately.

‘Library.’ Adam said.

Realistically, the library was just another extension of the archive, but at least a significant portion of it was actually readable. Most of the books were Gansey’s, but Ronan had contributed a few.

Ronan was sufficiently distracted by the conversation to allow Adam to enter the library first, but when he caught up the room appeared to be empty.

They explored the sections hidden by the bookshelves in silence. Ronan kept playing Adam’s sentences in his head.

It wasn’t as though Parrish wasn’t capable of hatred… probably. Ronan had never really considered it. Adam kept everything - distaste, approval, all of his reactions - at a consistently low level of expression. Ronan had easily perceived that he disliked people they encountered (Kavinsky, his dogs, occupants of space stations, people Ronan raced, people Gansey knew), but Parrish never really extended the unfavourable opinion to something as active as _hatred_.

But… it _was_ Kavinsky.

Even Gansey hated Kavinsky.

Adam yelped, and Ronan spun around so fast he felt his neck click. The gun was in his hand, more reflex than intention, but Adam had slumped back against a bookcase and the figure in the doorway was tilting its head. Ronan groaned; ‘ _Noah_. Fuck.’

‘I could not make contact with the bridge.’ Noah explained, looking at Ronan quizzically. ‘I was… concerned.’

‘I thought you were in recovery.’ Adam corrected his posture and moved closer, inspecting Noah’s face. His voice was still muffled, and Ronan could pick out the damage to his features, but he seemed perfectly functional.

‘The systems check has been completed.’ Noah replied. ‘I tried to monitor activity but nobody answered. Have there been developments?’

‘Whelk smuggled an alien onboard-’ Adam sighed.

‘Inside Jiang.’ Ronan interjected.

‘- and it killed Jiang, so Kavinsky shot Whelk.’

‘But there’s still an alien loose.’ Ronan added.

‘So we’re trying to push it into an airlock.’ Adam completed.

Noah stared, his expression morphing into alarm. ‘In unarmed pairs? That’s a terrible idea.’

Adam inclined his head slightly. ‘You’re not wrong.’

‘C’mon.’ Ronan waved Noah out of the room. ‘We gotta keep moving to meet Gansey.’

‘Can’t it get past you through the ventilation system?’ Noah asked anxiously. ‘Why not just push it into the hangar and depressurise the whole area? Trying to trap it in a corridor is just going to make it angry.’

Ronan raised his eyebrows, and Adam shrugged. ‘Full depressurisation of an area that large would take a long time, and may not _kill_ it. It’s not likely it would even get dragged out.’

‘Depressurisation might not kill it?’ Ronan repeated incredulously.

Adam ignored him, and asked Noah; ‘Can you track current console access?’

‘Yes.’ Noah frowned. ‘The filtration core was the most recent, and the library before that. The medical laboratory, and the computer core. Oh, and the biochemistry laboratory. And before that, the-’

‘Thanks, Noah.’ Ronan interrupted sharply. ‘That’s great.’

‘Do you think they’ve seen anything?’ Adam pondered, keying open the door to spare, unoccupied quarters.

‘Someone has just entered the Archive.’ Noah informed them. ‘The briefing room archive.’ That was the other corridor. One of Kavinsky’s teams.

There was more of Ronan’s stuff in this bedroom. He’d forgotten. He lifted a gilded orb and spun it lazily in one hand. _Shiny_.

Noah turned his head suddenly. ‘They’ve just exited the archive.’

‘What?’ Ronan looked up.

Adam straightened, too; ‘Already?’

‘Oh.’ Noah frowned. ‘There’s a compromised - Oh. Archive information has been disconnected from the ship mainframe.’

Ronan turned his disbelief on Adam, but Parrish was already headed for the door. ‘Broken. They found it.’

‘Fuck.’ Ronan strode after him. ‘ _Fuck_. This is why we needed fucking comms.’

’The power network has been damaged.’ Noah continued, the pitch of his voice rising nervously. ‘Lighting has failed in the archive, and the corridor.’

Adam had abandoned the search, and both of them, to hurry in Gansey’s direction. Ronan hesitated, waiting for Noah to catch up.

‘The med-lab is losing power.’ Noah reported, stepping into the corridor. ‘And Hydroponics.’

Ronan shook his head. ‘Hydro isn’t operational.’

‘No, but-’ Noah clutched Ronan’s arm, and pulled. He was ordinarily fairly astute at judging appropriate degrees of force, but on this occasion Ronan couldn’t suppress a hiss.

‘It’s so fast.’ Noah whispered. ‘It’s running straight through them.’

Adam was out of earshot, out of reach, but he was moving away from the threat, so Ronan let Noah hold him back.

‘Are they dead?’

‘I don’t-’ Noah blinked miserably. ‘I don’t know. Gansey-’

‘Gansey’s up there.’ Ronan pointed at Adam’s receding form. ‘With Blue. Henry and Helen are in the mess.’

‘Soldiers?’

‘Dead soldiers.’ Ronan couldn’t think clearly. And his arm hurt.

Noah dragged at him desperately. ‘Hangar door is being accessed.’

Ronan stared. ‘By the soldiers?’

‘I think they’re trying to run, Ronan, _god_.’

At times like this Ronan was frustrated by Noah’s intricately developed compassion response. It seemed peculiarly unfair that Noah was forced to experience compassion for people so undeserving.

‘Noah.’ Ronan glanced down the corridor, towards the distant speck of the hangar door. ‘Go after Adam. I’m going into the hangar. I want you to seal both the doors after I’m inside. Don’t let anyone access them.’

Noah’s grip tightened. ‘You can’t go in there.’

‘Ouch, Noah.’

‘I’m sorry. Don’t go, Ronan.’

‘I have to. Get off, Noah. I’m going to get rid of it.’

‘ _No_.’ Noah released him anyway, his face twisted into a haunting semblance of fear. ‘No, no, you can’t.’

‘It’s our _crew_ , Noah. I have to kill it. To _protect_ them. Keep them out, and I’ll fix this.’ Ronan squeezed Noah’s wrists, thin warm softness overlaying solid metal. ‘Promise me you’ll keep them out. Swear.’

Noah whimpered, and looked after Adam, who had noticed their absence and stopped. Finally he yielded with a nod. ‘Please don’t die.’

’I won’t.’ Ronan let him go and bolted.

 

 

 

He knew Adam had turned back before he reached the door, and he heard his name before he could get into the hangar.

‘ _Ronan_.’ He didn’t realise that Adam was running towards him until he was closing the door. ‘ _Don’t be-_ ’

It slid shut with a reassuring clunk, and there was silence.

Ronan waited, his back to the platform, to the broad expanse of the hangar stretched out beneath it, both hands pressed to the metal of the door.

He couldn’t hear anything, but the console flashed repeatedly, rejecting entry attempts on the other side. _Thank you Noah_.

He left the door, cautiously approaching the edge of the platform.

The hangar and the cargo hold behind it sat in the belly of the ship, stretched from stern to bow. The cargo hold was always sealed - more of Gansey’s archives, partly, additional food stores, Henry’s stock of electronics and spare parts, and the personal belongings they each couldn’t fit in their quarters (as well as inherited items from the Gansey, Lynch, Sargent and Cheng families) - but the hangar was largely empty. Ronan’s cruiser was poised over one drop-lock, suspended from its mounting, the ramp still lowered.

There were fuel tanks, major and minor. Small submersible and land vehicles strapped to their mountings. Another navigation console, for briefings. Henry’s engineering hold, pressure sealed so nothing got loose and disappeared when they did a drop.

Ronan couldn’t hear gunfire. He couldn’t hear anything at all. He couldn’t see anything below the platform, although places to hide were few and far between. Still, he couldn’t see the whole hangar from where he stood, and the second entry was concealed from sight.

He started down the ladder, moving slow enough that it didn’t clatter, but every footfall on the metal rungs seemed determined to echo in the vast empty space anyway.

On the floor he paused, holding his back against the metal briefly and producing the gun. Nothing had stirred.

The ship was his immediate priority.

It was unlikely anyone had touched it since they’d returned, so Parrish’s spacesuit was probably still onboard, and Ronan’s rifle. He didn’t want to risk putting a hole in the Henrietta, but the situation was becoming desperate.

The hangar had never been as unnerving. He could hear his own breathing, steady but frustratingly loud, and the stretches of open floor seemed infuriatingly wide and daunting.

It was a slow circle around the breadth of the cruiser, trying to keep his back against objects, trying to slink between shadows and cover, but he still managed to trip over something.

A soldier.

No.

Part of a soldier.

Ronan breathed; ‘ _Jesus_.’ He swiftly stepped over it.

They hadn’t made it far in from the other door. It looked like they’d been heading for cover behind the landing gear. Ronan didn’t recognise who it was.

Until he stumbled across the shredded remains of a uniform, still clinging to half a torso, one arm. _Prokopenko_.

The alien was in the hangar. _Christ_. But Parrish, Parrish and the others were safe, and Ronan could kill it, if he could find it before it found him. He moved under the body of the cruiser, over the candy painted warnings of the sliding drop-lock, navigating around the landing gear and hoping the darkness was more an ally than an enemy.

He reached the underside of the ramp and let his fingers skate across the metal surface. There was no vibration, no sound. There probably wasn’t anything inside the ship… if there was, it wasn’t moving.

The aliens had fooled motion trackers before, even used them to their advantage, but Ronan didn’t have a motion tracker, and neither had Prokopenko, or Lee. Maybe it was an instinctive strategy, to lie in wait, but the cruiser wasn’t an ideal hiding place for a surprise attack.

He snuck a look over the edge of the ramp, scanning the empty stretch of hangar and the shadowed interior of the cruiser, and then climbed up as quietly as he could manage.

Parrish’s space suit wasn’t the only abandoned object inside. Skov’s rifle lay on the floor. A bloodied jacket, presumably his. Helen’s helmet.

Ronan grabbed the rifle, and went for Parrish’s suit.

Prokopenko was dead. Lee could be too. Kavinsky and Brand had presumably been too far away to intervene. Ronan was sealed into the hangar with the unstoppable killer alien. And Parrish didn’t even think depressurisation would be enough to finish it off.

He lifted the suit up to his shoulders and let the seal start to tighten around his neck, before reaching for the helmet.

The helmet, _of course_.

It settled into place and clicked into the seal with a comforting hiss of compression. Ronan tapped at the screen with one heavy finger, and whispered; ‘Noah? Can you hear me?’

‘Ronan?’ The comms speaker wasn’t even fuzzy. There was a flurry of other noise - what sounded like Adam cursing him, his name and his existence - and Noah continued wretchedly. ‘Are you coming out?’

‘No.’ Ronan said quickly. ‘I’m in the cruiser.’ He picked up the rifle, and examined it. There were scratch marks along the length of the barrel, but it was difficult to be certain how extensive the damage was.

The PCR would be stronger, anyway, and Ronan had left it tucked next to the pilot’s seat.

‘What are you doing?’ Noah asked fretfully. ‘What did you find?’

Ronan recalled what was left of Prokopenko’s torso, and held his tongue. He carefully stepped over an abandoned medkit. ’Nothing. I want you to open the drop-lock.’

‘But Adam said-’

Parrish contributed a doubtlessly unflattering remark in the background.

‘I know, Noah. I just want to bring it into view.’

Adam probably wasn’t wrong about depressurisation. When was Adam ever wrong? But Ronan had to try _something_.

Admittedly, “not full strength yet” was starting to look pretty fucking inaccurate.

The partition in front of the cockpit was a step away, but Ronan felt the ship shift beneath him. It could have been settling in the couplings. It could have been rocking from his movement.

He could hear the sound of liquid dripping onto metal behind him, somehow distinct over his own breathing inside the helmet, and he curled his finger towards the rifle trigger, swallowing involuntarily.

The alien had found him first. 


	14. Kavinsky would fight an Alien for bubblegum I swear

It snagged his ankle before he could turn or raise the gun, and he lost his footing, bracing for impact on his forearms. The helmet hit the floor anyway, and his head bounced against the reinforced glass, opening the cuts on his face.

‘Ronan?’ Noah’s voice, nervous, right in his ear.

Something landed on his back, and he felt the cold strength of the thing before it started to crush him into the floor, and the air rushed from his lungs. He tried to pull the rifle closer, tried to twist, but it was abominably heavy, and another foot landed on his arm.

No, he was wrong. It was a giant, malformed hand, silver grey and ridged, each of the five fingers tipped with a claw at least three inches long.

‘Open-‘ He gasped, every attempt to struggle proving ineffectual. ‘-the lock.’

His arm was being pulverised, and the claws were digging into the suit, threatening to puncture the outer layer of fabric, and he realised dimly that it was going to tear him apart.

The warning alarm sounded, echoing into the cruiser from the hangar, and Ronan tasted blood. He couldn’t breathe. His spine was splintering.

There was a grating sound as something started to slide across the floor, but Ronan couldn’t feel the pressure change, and it the outrush of air hadn’t shifted the alien.

His shoulder was on fire, joints threatening to snap apart. If he could- if he _couldn’t_ shoot it, and it wouldn’t let go long enough to get sucked into space, he’d just have to drop it from the Henrietta in the cruiser.

‘ _Drop_ -’

There was blood on the helmet - the inside - and he was beginning to wonder which of his internal organs were being pulped, or if it was a evenhanded spread of maceration.

‘ _Ronan_?’ Noah sounded desperate. _Please, don’t let him open the door_. Only he couldn’t, now the drop-lock was disengaged.

‘- _cruiser_.’

Something went _bang!_ very close to him, the cruiser was suddenly bright, and there was an answering screech, like the voices of the damned. _Gunfire_.

More shots, volume compounded in the small space, and the weight lifted abruptly as the alien retreated.

Ronan tried to groan, but it took his ribs a few seconds to wake up to the possibility of allowing air to reach his lungs.

With the weight gone, he felt himself starting to slide towards the ramp, the demanding pull of air, but something caught on the back of his suit and dragged him back.

He was rolled, untidily, onto his spine. His arm was aching and his chest felt flattened, and he could barely see for blurred vision and choking, but he recognised his PCR. Behind it, floating in the darkness like a disembodied nightmare, Kavinsky’s deranged face.

Everything loose had been sucked from the cruiser, and the safety belts along the seats were whipping around in a frenzy. There was no sign of the alien… It could have been dragged out of the drop-lock, or Kavinsky had given it the opportunity to escape.

There was blood smeared across Kavinsky’s face, in his hair, down his uniform. It looked as though he’d tangled with the thing at close quarters. Probably he’d hidden in the cruiser - _no_. Probably he’d gone after the bigger rifle, the way Ronan had. He was holding Ronan’s suit with one hand, reaching for the wall on their right with the other. The PCR strap must have been hooked on something, preventing him from being ripped out of the cruiser along with everything else.

He snatched a belt, or half of one, and hauled Ronan close enough to pull it over his head. It caught around his throat, and Ronan wheezed, but he could move his good arm enough to shove his wrist through and prevent it from strangling him. Noah’s voice was a soft, persistent hum in his ear, but he couldn’t concentrate enough to comprehend it.

‘You-’ Kavinsky was laughing, a rabid animal. ‘- stupid fucking shit.’

Ronan heard the familiar scrape of metal releasing, and the back half of the cruiser dropped from its couplings abruptly. The ramp slammed into the edge of the drop-lock, and the ship listed to the side, swaying precariously over the drop into space. Ronan was flung forward against the belt and slammed back into the edge of the seat.

 _Fuck_. Noah had heard him. _Shit_. The alien wasn’t on the cruiser. _Fucking shit_. The front coupling was stuck, and the ship wouldn’t fall. The ramp was still down and scraping against the hangar floor. Ronan still couldn’t catch his goddamn breath, and given enough time the whole room was going to be emptied of air.

On the plus side, Kavinsky would suffocate.

The downside was that Ronan would be stuck in the ship, mincemeat for the alien, until someone pressurised the area again and came inside to get themselves slaughtered.

‘Sonuvabitch is good.’ Kavinsky shouted viciously, over the rush of air. ‘We chased it in here after it got Lee, but the fucker was waiting.’

Ronan didn’t have an opportunity to answer, even if he’d had something to say. Kavinsky slipped out of the rifle strap, and balanced, resisting the airflow, waiting for movement on the ramp.

He wasn’t waiting long. Ronan struggled to sit upright, get the belt low enough across his chest to give his arms some freedom, but the alien returned with unexpected speed.

Ronan registered the movement - a flash of motion overhead - before he actually understood it was on the ceiling. Moving fast, too fast. Kavinsky hadn’t fired at it, and it was launching itself the last few metres towards him, close enough that Ronan flattened himself (more than he already was) against the seat.

Kavinsky abandoned the rifle strap and lunged to the side, narrowly avoiding disembowelment and catching one of the seats on the far side of the cruiser, barely dodging the alien’s tail as it whipped past.

Its momentum carried it into the partition with considerable force, and Ronan felt the ship rock, hanging by a thread from the broken coupling. The ramp screeched across the hangar floor until it fell from the lip of the drop-lock and the back of the cruiser fell into the gap.

There was the familiar sensation of weightlessness, and Ronan’s legs dangled into empty space as the cruiser tilted tail-first into the hole, the belly of the ship swinging to rest against the opposite edge of the lock with a dull thud. Kavinsky was holding onto a belt one handed - he’d produced a knife the length of his forearm - and the attention of the alien was focused on him.

There were biohazard yellow streaks dripping across its gleaming head, evidence that Kavinsky hadn’t fired at random earlier, and Ronan watched a droplet of blood roll smoothly away and get sucked into space.

The tail was swinging dangerously close to him in the small space, but he scrambled for his pistol anyway as the alien stretched towards Kavinsky, massive jaw separating to reveal silver teeth dripping with saliva… and smaller, glistening teeth inside, some kind of internal jaw. Kavinsky, despite being a goddamn maniac, couldn’t kill the damn thing with just a knife. When Kavinsky kicked out, planting a boot into alien jaw and nearly losing his whole leg for the trouble, Ronan pulled the trigger.

Momentarily dislodged, and hissing, the alien lost traction and slid towards the ramp, barely managing to sink claws into the metal before it tumbled into the void.

‘Lynch,’ Kavinsky was white with rage or possibly imminent hypoxia. It was difficult to tell. ‘Fuck off.’

His voice was a rasp. He really would suffocate, if the cruiser fell, or if the lock wasn’t closed within minutes.

‘You’re _crazy_ , K.’ Ronan answered. He untangled himself from the belt, feeling his ribs and shoulder and arm burning with every motion. ‘You can’t fucking _stab_ it to death.’

He fell free, holding on with one hand, scrabbling for a foothold as the airlock dragged at his legs.

‘I’m gonna _kill_ that motherfucker, Lynch. _Don’t_ get in my _fucking_ way.’ Kavinsky was crazed, possibly delirious - then he let go.

It wasn’t a shock, but Ronan yelled anyway. He dropped the gun, and it bounced off the floor and rattled into the gaping, hungry space below them, and he released the belt automatically.

He fell slower than he’d expected, slamming against the frame of the cruiser and clutching for something to hold on to, and wildly snatching at where Kavinsky might have been.

He caught Kavinsky’s arm first - purely by virtue of the sergeant sliding feet first into the alien’s skull and briefly ceasing his descent - and then managed to claw a last-second grip on a metal bracket under the row of passenger seats. Neither grip was solid. His fingers around the bracket were unwieldy in the rough suit glove, his arm splintered with shards of pain, and the one hand curled furiously around Kavinsky’s bicep wasn’t strong enough to resist the chasm pulling them both down.

Something glinted in his peripheral vision, and the end of the alien tail sank home, embedded somewhere in Kavinsky’s abdomen.

_This wasn’t a good way to die._

Kavinsky had kicked the alien loose, and it had slid to the bottom of the ramp, holding on by barely two claws and the tail buried in Kavinsky’s stomach. Kavinsky made no attempt to return Ronan’s grip, dragged at by the alien’s weight, one white-knuckled fist still clutching his knife. Ronan was the last tether for them both, pain building behind his eyes, stealing his breath, vision compromised by popping bubbles of light, and his arms stretched to tearing point.

‘ _K!’_

Kavinsky looked at him, colourless, hardly alive. His lips were white, spilled over by fresh blood, eyes wide and blank.

Ronan couldn’t move, couldn’t pull him any further up.

Kavinsky showed his teeth, and stabbed Ronan in the arm with his knife.

Ronan dropped him, pain tearing through his arm, numbly watching the slow-motion fall. Kavinsky colliding with the alien, turning the knife on _it_ as the impact sent them both plunging down the lowered ramp, sliding over the edge, spiralling sickeningly into the empty blackness below.

His arm was bleeding. He could feel the slickness on the inside of the suit. He could feel his other shoulder going to pieces. He could hear the low emergency chime in his helmet, as it registered the breach to the oxygen seal.

He could hear Noah.

 

 

 

Adam couldn’t leave the door. He couldn’t let Noah leave, either.

Gansey. Gansey didn’t know. Somebody had to tell him. Gansey would make Ronan stop this, Gansey would make Noah open the door.

_Why wouldn’t he open the fucking door?_

Reasoning with him didn’t work. Pleading with him (not a dignified moment) had gotten Adam closer to a reaction, but Noah had still resisted. Ronan had made him swear.

He wouldn’t open it, even though Adam could see that it was killing him. Every second that passed was torture for him, everything he could hear from whatever headset or earpiece Ronan had picked up in there-

It had to be the spacesuit - Adam’s suit - because Noah was opening the cruiser airlock and Ronan couldn’t, he _could not_ be that reckless without a suit on.

If he was in a spacesuit he wouldn’t asphyxiate.

If he was in the cruiser, he could drop out and abandon the hangar.

But why was Noah shivering? Why were his eyes growing rounder with every insufferable, passing moment of this nightmare?

He kept whispering Ronan’s name, repeatedly, until it was more like a mantra than a question. Adam couldn’t hear the other side of the comms, he couldn’t hear _anything_ , he couldn’t make Noah explain what was causing the fear that was consuming him.

Adam tried the door console again, fingernails scratching the screen, fully aware that Noah’s distraction wouldn’t improve his odds. He wanted to rip the screen from the wall and throw it. Would that help? Would that bypass this insane lockdown protocol?

He wanted to be angry - Jesus, he _was_ angry - but he couldn’t blame Ronan. This was just classic Lynch. Adam was the fool for turning his back on Ronan for even a second.Three years of Lynch and he should have known, he _did_ know that Ronan would go to any lengths to defend this ship, to protect this crew.

Any stupid, reckless, inexcusable lengths.

Noah whined, lifting both hands to his head, and dropping them again, wretchedly, when he recognised it wouldn’t help.

’What happened?’ Adam turned on him, caught his arms. ‘Noah? Is he talking? Is he alive? _Noah?’_

‘Ronan? Ronan? Please, Ronan.’

Adam tried forcing the door, overtaken by hazy panic. There was no edge to get his fingers around, no weak spot to kick, nothing to use as leverage. There was no rational way the door could open - it was in essence an airlock door, safety sealed when the hangar lock opened. Even if Noah gave Adam access, he couldn’t get in while the room was depressurised.

This stupid ship. This stupid old intolerable ship.

‘Noah, shut it.’ He hated his voice, a shout with barbs attached. ‘Shut it, _please_. Shut the lock. _Please_.’

Noah couldn’t be more pale. He didn’t have the blood to lose. Somehow, though, along the way, he had acquired the ability to cry.

‘I’m shutting it.’ He whimpered.

Adam swung for the console, choking out gratitude. He didn’t want- He didn’t care why. He just needed to get into the room. He just needed to get to Ronan.

He couldn’t lose Ronan, couldn’t lose him. He couldn’t face it.

It would destroy Gansey. They couldn’t run the ship. They couldn’t be _on_ the ship.

There was no place the grief wouldn’t haunt them. There was no place in the universe they wouldn’t feel lost.

Adam couldn’t catch his breath, and the console wouldn’t work, wouldn’t budge, no matter how rough he was. It just flashed up a “pressurising” warning and refused to open.

Noah wasn’t doing anything. He was just crying. Waiting, and crying, and Adam couldn’t manage anger at him either.

He should have expected it. He should have seen it coming. Ronan had been throwing down with everything he could find since the beginning of this shitfight and Adam had turned his back, hadn’t thought, hadn’t considered the consequences…

The console, scratched beyond repair and still bleating cheerfully about pressurisation, finally conceded a safe stage of progress and yielded to Adam’s frenetic attempts.

The door didn’t slide open fast enough. Adam hit his shoulder scraping through it. He fell against the platform railing dizzily, and scrambled for the ladder.

The cruiser was still there. Almost.


	15. So stand;

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm just sorry.  
> Writer's block is kicking my ass. Everything-block is kicking my ass. I'm just... kicked.

Ronan’s grip failed and he dropped from the ship, slamming into something hard.

Metal was screaming, or it could have been him.

He couldn’t move. Couldn’t really breathe, either. There was no oxygen left, in the room or the compromised suit. There was blood, a lot of blood, and hazy spinning lights and shadows flickering across his vision.

Wheeze in, wheeze out. Forcibly. Stay alive.

Something struck his side, unexpectedly, and his head, arms, shoulders were pulled off the ground.

‘Ronan.’ Adam’s voice, low and determined. ‘Goddamn.’

‘ _Ronan_.’ Noah, higher pitched and desperate. ‘ _Ronan_.’

Adam wrenched the helmet until it clicked, lifted it off Ronan’s head, and flung it away. Ronan felt air wash over his face, and choked it in greedily, but the room was still spinning, nauseatingly, and he couldn’t fix his gaze on anything.

Someone caught his wrist, too, his left wrist, lifted it until it was over his head, and someone else shoved something over his face, his nose and mouth, and there was the cold influx of oxygen down his throat.

Adam was murmuring, telling him; ‘Breathe. _Breathe_.’

‘A tourniquet.’ Noah mumbled, leaning over him. ‘Hold the- hold this.’

There was some shuffling, and then something tightened around his arm, tight, tight, achingly painful. His breath caught, and he relinquished a muffled groan.

‘We need Helen.’ Adam muttered. ‘The medlab.’

‘I can lift him.’ Noah said. ‘Get-’

It sounded bad. Ronan didn’t know how bad, but he was experiencing spreading agony interspersed with shards of stabbing pain, so… on the worse end of the spectrum.

There was a burst of noise, and gradually Ronan recognised Gansey’s voice, getting louder, more alarmed, until he landed beside them.

‘God. Ronan, god, no. _Ronan_.’

Hands closed around his jaw, under the oxygen mask, and thumbs skated across his cheekbones.

‘What did it do to him?’ Gansey asked, frantic. ‘Where is it?’ 

‘Spaced…’ Ronan slurred, uncertain of how clear it was through the mask. When someone lifted it off, he repeated carefully; ‘Sp- Spaced…’

He felt Gansey’s shaky sigh through his fingertips. ‘Dammit, Ronan.’

An unfamiliar voice said; ‘Looks like it got the others.’

Ronan forced his remaining energy into finding the most Gansey face amongst the amorphous blurring shapes floating overhead.

‘I tri- tried-’

The Gansey face creased, worry edged with sadness. It was so important, that he knew Ronan hadn’t just let Kavinsky die. It was so, so important.

‘-to s-save him…’

‘I know, Ronan.’ Gansey whispered, folding Ronan’s left arm across his stomach gently. ‘He didn’t want to be saved.’

The world tipped as they lifted him off the ground, and Ronan squeezed his eyes shut against the sickening dizziness that followed.

 

 

 

Adam and Rutherford disposed of the bodies.

Kavinsky and Prokopenko were already gone, leaving Jiang, Whelk, Brand and Lee to be wrapped up and dispatched from the airlock. Rutherford showed Adam how to fold the sheets, with efficient, dispassionate familiarity that spoke of a grim history.

It wasn’t the worst job Adam had ever had to do, and Rutherford was impressively calm. He and Skov were the last survivors of Kavinsky’s squad, but he didn’t seem surprised. Numbed, possibly, but not surprised.

When they were done, Adam returned to the hangar to circle the remnants of the cruiser.

The airlock had closed on the ship, crushing and ripping off the ramp, and what was left was still hanging precariously from the broken coupling. The hull was torn apart, dented, mangled. Fixing such a mess was beyond even Henry’s skill.

Ronan was going to lose it.

He was only alive because the metal of the Henrietta was stronger than the metal of the cruiser. He was alive because none of his broken ribs had punctured anything vital, because they had reached him before he lost too much blood, because Noah had closed the airlock before he’d suffocated or fallen. He was probably alive because Kavinsky had pissed off the alien more than him, because Kavinsky was more angry, more reckless, more _crazy_ than Ronan had ever been.

Adam could think of a hundred ways Ronan could have died, a hundred reasons he should have died.

But he hadn’t, and he wouldn’t, now Helen had him.

It had been long enough since Jiang, since Adam’s possible (merely possible) infection, to counteract concern about his own survival. Ronan’s painkillers had been effective, and as they faded the pain blossomed from the centre of bruised skin, more like an impact wound than internal damage. It was unlikely he was infected at all, and Ronan had saved him from his own hasty assumptions.

He didn’t have the energy, or the stomach for relief.

In return, he’d left Ronan behind.

He wasn’t naive enough to think he could have stopped him, but Adam could have, should have stayed. Predicted Ronan’s response, tackled the alien alongside him.

Maybe then Ronan wouldn’t have needed to be sewn back together. Gansey wouldn’t be refusing to leave his side, and Opal wouldn’t be dark with vengeful fury about the alien, about Kavinsky, about Ronan coming back broken.

Adam salvaged what he could from the cruiser. They’d have to get a new one, a stable frame, with an uncompromised atmospheric seal, before there was even the possibility of making modifications with the cruiser’s tech.

They could afford it. Damn, Ronan could afford it with a handful of the crap off his floor alone, but it wouldn’t be _his_.

The PCR was missing too, and the pistol. Adam had cut up Ronan’s spacesuit, and then his own had been rendered useless. The main navcon was broken, and so was the medical scanner. Whatever was dubious about the stasis system still had to be fixed.

Noah had been damaged, but not irreparably.

Adam had been injured, but apparently that wasn’t irreparable either.

Henry had been struck, ( _Henry!)_ , which felt abominably uncivilised.

Kavinsky was dead.

His death didn’t trouble Adam, particularly, but Ronan’s lingering attachment did. He didn’t think Ronan had liked Kavinsky, far from it, but nobody, no one, was as loyal as him. And they’d been… something… once. Maybe not friends, but something. Comrades. Soldiers-in-arms.

And Kavinsky’s death had been too close.

There was exhaustion under Adam’s skin, in his bones. He wished he could sleep, but there was no way to stop thinking about Ronan, and the alien infested settlement on the surface of the planet below them, and how far the Corps would go to re-acquire their assets.

What were they planning to do with the aliens, anyway? Weaponise them? That had obviously been a success.

What did the Corps think they were going to war against? Except for, now, their own creation.

But this had been a covert mission. Kavinsky hadn’t even known Whelk’s intentions, and now the entire crew of the Henrietta had the information. Was that treason? The interplanetary alliance wasn’t exactly a government, but they had enough authority to send the Corps after ships.

If the Corps came after them, death would be the best possible outcome.

They could flee. Deep space. Gansey had done enough mapping to find them a viable planet. But they’d run out of fuel, eventually, and then what? Just… a life. Rough constructed huts and basic cultivation. Or hunting and gathering in the wilderness.

What would that life be like? Growing old, in natural time. With each other. 

Easier than Zeta. Different to Rhea. But aimless… changeless. Would it be bearable?

Noah found him later, in the laboratory, preparing cells for the graft. He skirted the edges of the room, twisting his hands nervously.

‘You should get some sleep.’ He suggested, navigating around what was left of Ronan’s scattered mess. ‘And talk to Helen.’

‘I’m okay.’

‘But-’

‘I’m okay, Noah.’

‘Are you?’ Noah grimaced, fidgeting. ‘I didn’t think- I didn’t want you to be angry.’

Adam paused, stared at him. ‘I’m not angry.’

He did need to sleep. He did want painkillers. He just… couldn’t slow down, couldn’t rest. Couldn’t stop thinking about what would happen next.

‘I’m sorry.’ Noah continued anyway. ‘I didn’t want to lock you out. I didn’t want him to go in there.’

‘I know, Noah, don’t worry.’ Adam frowned. Noah’s programming was a marvel, but often it meant Adam struggled to follow his more convoluted patterns of thought.

‘It’s just- Ronan. It’s Ronan.’

Something in Adam’s chest seized. ‘What?’ He caught the edge of the bench as he tipped forward, lightheaded. ‘What happened?’

‘He’s alive.’ Noah whispered. ‘But he’s haemorrhaging.’

Adam shoved himself back, spinning towards the door. ‘You didn’t say- _Noah_.’

‘We reached him.’ He pushed through the laboratory door, stumbling on the threshold. ‘We _reached_ him.’

He nearly tripped over Ronan, leaning against the wall in the corridor, and immediately swore.

Ronan smirked at him. ‘Language.’ He gestured faintly towards Opal, who was crouching further down the corridor.

Adam slumped against the opposite wall with a sigh, as Noah tentatively stuck his head through the doorway. ‘I’m so sorry. He made me do it.’

‘You’re supposed to be fucking _sedated_.’ Adam responded sharply. Ronan was even more pale than usual, especially in a black tank, but his skin was decorated with little crimson seams and squares of bandage. His lips were white and cracked, eyes red and set deep into bruised sockets.

He shrugged, promptly wincing at the movement. ‘Didn’t really take.’

‘It’s been a few hours.’ Noah explained quietly. ‘The dose was small. Helen was worried about seizures.’

‘Why are you _up_? Why is he up?’

Noah looked pensive for a second, and concluded. ‘It’s Ronan.’

Adam took a breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. The anxious adrenaline hadn’t subsided. ‘You ran away from Gansey?’

‘Ganseys.’ Ronan corrected slowly. ‘Plural. And I’m just gonna sleep in my own damn bed.’ He tried to gesture again, and failed. His left arm was bandaged from palm to elbow, and the right was in a sling, making him look… disturbingly fragile.

Noah nodded, apologetically, and helped Ronan straighten up. Any poise he’d managed to establish leaning on the wall instantly dissipated. He could barely move, and he’d still come down the corridor to play a stupid prank.

Adam glared at the floor, trapped between irritation and infuriatingly intense relief. ‘You’re an asshole, you know.’

‘I’m aware.’ Ronan attempted a flourish, and merely succeeded in twitching his shoulders sideways about an inch. It still made his eyes water.

Noah half-carried him back to his quarters. As soon as Adam opened the door Opal bolted and disappeared into her hideaway, and Noah lowered Ronan carefully onto the bed.

‘Do you have painkillers?’ Adam asked Ronan, helping Noah moved him up the mattress. His breathing was shallow, and he curled over himself instinctively, but he still forced a mocking smile.

‘Do you?’

‘Here.’ Noah interrupted gently, placing a new box of pills onto the shelf. ‘She only brings them with her because of you, you know.’

Ronan smirked again, and closed his eyes.

‘Let me get some food.’ Noah offered, shifting towards the door. ‘Will you make sure he doesn’t run off?’

‘I have to-’

Noah had already closed the door.

Adam sank onto the edge of the mattress quietly. Ronan looked unnaturally small, and cold, and after some digging Adam found a blanket that wasn’t tangled up underneath them and spread it over him.

He mumbled a noise of appreciation, and rolled onto his back with a hiss. ‘How’s the- the bruise, Parrish?’

‘It’s not a competition, Lynch.’

‘It is, and I’m winning.’

Adam made a sardonic noise, and pushed Ronan’s bedsheets into a tolerable surface. ‘The gold star is yours.’

He lay down, carefully, trying not to jostle his companion. The answering; ‘Mmm-’ vibrated through his ribcage. ‘Shiny.’

The bed was comfortable and the room was dark, as always. Adam was tired, and Ronan smelled like antiseptic. He let his eyes drift closed, the image of Ronan’s profile burned into his mind.

‘Parrish.’ Ronan’s murmur stirred him.

‘Mm-hm?’

‘Are you pissed?’

‘What?’ He forced his eyes open, blinked at Ronan’s expression in the gloom.

‘Mad, Parrish. Are you mad?’

‘No.’ He cleared his throat. Ronan’s eyes glinted, pale in the dim light.

‘Sound pissed.’

Adam huffed, softly, into the pillow. He wasn’t pissed. He understood what Ronan had chosen to do.

But he hated the panic, the desperation. The unsettlingly familiar threat of fear and loss.

‘Adam-’

’No.’ He repeated, lower.

 

 

 

Ronan was starting to think the drugs Helen had given him were stronger than she’d said.

Adam hadn’t found Noah’s visit to the lab amusing, which was hardly surprising, but his fractious irritation was still unexpected. He typically expressed his frustration through monosyllabic acerbity, and this felt different. Vehement.

And there were his hands, of course. One on either side of Ronan’s neck.

Ronan’s face was either cold, or numb, it was difficult to tell, but either way Adam’s fingertips were searing. Brushing the lines of Ronan’s neck, his stuttering pulse, the nervous movement of his throat as he swallowed.

There was a thumb on his cheek, on the edge of a bruise. He tried to watch Adam’s eyes, not his hands, not his mouth. Tried not to look away, even as the shadows blurred and shifted.

Adam’s other hand curved around the back of his neck, his elbow hooked over one of Ronan’s shoulders. Ronan realised what he was doing, and knew he was dreaming. Or maybe there really was haemorrhaging, and he was slipping into a coma.

Adam kissed him, gently, and drew back.

‘Adam.’ Ronan was breathless, the name soundless, but Adam answered anyway, accepting the invitation and pressing closer.

‘You-’ His breath brushed Ronan’s lips. ‘- and your asshole heroics.’

Ronan tried to snort, and only managed a muffled cough. ‘Hypocrite.’

Teeth grazed his jaw, a painless retaliation, before Adam kissed him again.

Ronan probably wasn’t firing on all cylinders, but it still registered that this was very unlike a dream, or even a drug-induced hallucination. Adam was solid and warm and certain, and Ronan was as helpless and dazed and generally overwhelmed as he ever expected to be under Parrish-touching circumstances.

Adam wasn’t impulsive. He was hardly ever even affectionate. He’d known the depth of Ronan’s feelings nearly as long as Ronan himself had.

If it wasn’t a dream or a hallucination, a delusion or a head injury or a coma… it was nothing fleeting, nothing capricious. If it was real, _god in heaven_ , if it was _real_ , it was _everything_.


	16. Let's play: Dream or Reality? The most popular sedation-based gameshow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So after weeks of uselessness and an ill-advised re-reading, I have discovered that I... hate this? What have I done?  
> But I like everyone reading it, so it will be finished. As such.

Ronan dreamt about the orchard on the space station where he’d grown up, where he’d played tag with Matthew, and climbed the fruit trees.

They had stone fruit, here, and fresh-leaved citrus. Thick grass, carved wooden chairs and a projected perfect blue sky.

Ronan sat on the grass and ate and ate until his fingers were stained with colour and sticky with juice. He was wearing his own clothes, though, jeans and a dark crumpled shirt. He didn’t know what he was doing back here, but he suspected he had a good reason.

Parrish was close, sitting next to him, shoulder-to-shoulder. He was concentrating on something in his hand, a glowing overripe plum, studying it with the intensity of the scientist.

‘How long?’ Parrish asked. It was difficult to tell if it was directed at Ronan or the fruit.

Ronan answered anyway, watching juice drip off his fingers. ‘Always.’

‘Since we met.’ Adam told the plum authoritatively.

‘Since before.’ Ronan corrected. He looked over, at Adam’s coveralls, his unkempt hair.

What were they talking about? No, arguing about? They’d been arguing about it for a while now. Night didn’t fall in the orchard.

‘I’m not sure.’ Adam reiterated, examining the plum suspiciously.

Ronan laughed, muffled by a bite into something starburst sweet - a cantaloupe.

‘Try it.’

‘I’m not sure.’ He repeated, looking up suddenly. His eyes had gone serious, worried. Ronan felt that they’d been here before. This was familiar.

‘It’s fine, Parrish.’ He gestured, and Adam pressed the plum into his hand, watched him lift and inspect it while maintaining the same concerned expression.

‘What if-’ Adam cut himself off when Ronan took a bite, a small one. The plum was good. Exceptionally good. He nearly wanted it as much as he wanted Adam to have it.

‘See?’

Parrish was afraid. There wasn’t real fruit where he’d come from, and even the substitutes were frequently rotten.

They would stay, until Adam had tried everything, until he had eaten his share of the fruit. Ronan didn’t care how long it took. They’d stay here until they were old, if they needed to.

 

He knew he’d dreamt about Adam again. He knew as soon as he’d woken up, but the details were foggy. The painkillers, and the sedatives had given everything a mild dream-haze, and even Opal’s tousled head, bobbing about the room, seemed surreal.

It hadn’t been one of the dreams with the ocean, or one of the dreams with the cruiser.

He thought it was one of the ones with the gardens, on Emery, because he remembered being outside, and he remembered closeness.

His mouth was still warm with it, and he was inexplicably giddy.

It seemed to be more than one dream, or one that changed. He remembered his quarters, too, the darkness and Adam’s presence, his solemnity. He remembered it feeling real, but he remembered thinking it was a dream.

And Adam had eaten fruit, again - or was that a memory?

The blanket was over him, but he didn’t remember coming to bed. He knew he was injured, but it seemed distant. A long time ago Noah had given him pills.

The pills were probably to blame for this confusion.

He hoped they’d fix Noah soon. Not because of pain, which he denied, but because Noah deserved to have things how he wanted them, when he could.

Ronan pushed the blanket aside, and Opal turned to look at him. She was sorting his rocks, on the floor, into shapes and patterns and groups. He hummed at her affectionately, and she bared her teeth in acknowledgement and returned to her toys.

Was she young, to be travelling the universe? Probably. Was it the best thing they could offer her? Definitely.

He went to the bathroom, slow and uncertain as a baby. There was still chaos, in the sink, from that argument - no, not an argument - with Adam. Ronan’s throat closed up, briefly, just thinking of it.

He scooped out what he could, with both of his arms relatively busted. It wasn’t like he was usually a paragon of organisation anyway.

It was edging steadily back to bed that reminded him, with abrupt clarity, of the dream.

Adam had been with him, in here. Ronan had meant to ask him if he was angry. He’d been rehearsing it since they’d given him the first painkillers.

He couldn’t remember if it was real or not. Noah had brought him back, and Adam had helped, but then, perhaps, he’d slept, and they’d both left.

Or perhaps Adam had stayed, and had kissed him.

Had they eaten fruit? He felt too hungry to have eaten. He felt too damaged to have been kissed.

He could stand, with the help of the wall. He could go and find out.

And if he was wrong, he’d just get something to eat instead.

 

Parrish was in the laboratory again. He looked different, even in his coveralls. Like Ronan hadn’t seen him for several days.

Everything was back in place. Every surface in the room was cleaner than Ronan could fathom. Adam himself looked more polished. Not new, but… sharper.

He was standing at the table, intently filling lines in a notebook with small, neat writing. Specimen studies, probably, but there was nothing in front of him.

His focus when he did this had always been one of Ronan’s weaknesses. At present, it was battling for dominance with the cold seeping into him from the corridor and the pain slowly beginning to radiate from his ribs as his weight sank onto them. Ronan leaned on the doorframe heavily. He probably looked like hell.

‘Adam.’

Parrish didn’t move. He hadn’t heard.

Ronan cleared his throat, shifting uncomfortably. ‘Adam.’

Adam looked up and across to him. For a moment, he smiled, warm recognition - then it slipped stubbornly into a frown. ‘You shouldn’t be up.’

Ronan would have scoffed, if he had the energy.

‘And yet.’ He managed half a shrug instead.

‘What is it?’ Adam straightened, stretching his shoulders, his arms. He was careful, wary of his own injury. Ronan, sharply reminded, wanted to ask about it, but his mind was still fixed on his memory. Real, or dream?

He didn’t know how to ask. He’d hoped that seeing Adam would have been answer enough, but everything was just as blurred, muddled.

Even now, the lab seemed overlit and Parrish seemed hazy round the edges. Like a mirage.

‘C’mon.’ Adam said, moving closer. Ronan didn’t resist the help. The gentle protest of his ribs and shoulder was swiftly escalating to an aggressive complaint.

Wandering the corridors half-sedated. Fantastic. That wasn’t going to make him look stupid at all.

It took an age to get back to his quarters. Even with Adam helping, and the painkillers, it felt like someone had taken a club to his chest. He cursed every shuddering breath.

Neither of them spoke, until he was back on the bed and Adam was wilfully rearranging the blankets over him. ‘Damn it, Ronan.’

Ronan pressed his eyes shut, willing his limbs to stop shaking. He’d been alright ten minutes earlier. He’d felt fine.

There were a couple of soft thuds, and the mattress dipped.

When Ronan reopened his eyes Adam was looking at him questioningly.

‘I’m staying.’ He explained. He added carefully; ‘If you want me to.’

Ronan nodded a clumsy approval, and Adam settled back into his place on the other pillow.

It was difficult not to watch him, shifting to get comfortable, trying to scrub the restlessness from his own expression. He laid a hand on the blanket padding over Ronan’s chest, and sighed.

‘You need to give this time.’

He meant the healing, presumably. The resting. Ronan swallowed, distracted.

‘Are you sure, Adam?’

He wasn’t sure why it had to be that question, rather than something else. Maybe because if he was delusional, than Adam wouldn’t understand. Maybe because he needed to know, more than he needed anything else.

There was a pause. Adam’s expression didn’t change, but his hand didn’t move either.

Ronan felt his chest expanding to burst. He hadn’t been dreaming… but Adam was-

‘Yes.’

It was a flood of heat, first, than abrupt cold. ‘Are you _sure_?’

If it was guilt, he couldn’t accept it. He wouldn’t let Adam feel obliged about anything, any of it.

Adam smiled, again. His eyes crinkled around the edges. He had intoxicatingly deep dimples. ‘Yes.’

Ronan exhaled, and pain rippled out from the sudden dissipation of tension in his chest.

The silence lasted long enough for Ronan to drift towards sleep, which was maybe why Adam continued at all.

‘Couldn’t lose you.’ He was murmuring, half into the pillow. ‘Worst thing I’ve ever felt.’

So Ronan slept.

 

 

 

Whatever Helen had given him was powerful. He was confused whenever he woke, and after the first time, Adam wouldn’t take chances. If he wasn’t with Ronan, someone else was. Usually Gansey, or Noah.

Gansey still had the whole “Corps conspiracy” thing to deal with. They explained bits and pieces of the problem to Ronan, but he forgot them so regularly it was just frustrating. He was sleeping nearly ten hours out of every twelve, and that felt like overkill, in spite of the supposed near-death experience.

Adam was helping Henry run safety protocols on the stasis system, and Noah was running cross-ship diagnostics, but Ronan was never alone. Helen came to check his progress, either every day or multiple times daily, he couldn’t tell, and Blue came to make fun of his sleep-drooling and to talk about a new ship.

It took three attempts for the realisation to actually sink home. The cruiser was trashed.

On the other hand, he didn’t need to be told that Kavinsky was dead. He couldn’t shake that particular memory.

There were still soldiers onboard. It surprised him. Rutherford, and the loyal dog Skov, with his damaged arm. He didn’t see either of them, which was a relief, but he didn’t trust them alone with the others. He asked Noah to watch them, and Noah, patiently, agreed.

Parrish was the most exhausting part. When he wasn’t around, Ronan questioned his memory. When he was, Ronan was forced to doubt his sanity. Remembering what he could, of Adam’s affection, and constantly desperate to know if something had been forgotten.

Adam, too, was faintly uneasy about the situation. He was never gone for long, or that was Ronan’s impression of things. He preferred to be close, but he seemed uncertain of what to do once he’d gotten there. He was unnerved by inaction, and increasingly Ronan discovered him examining or arranging things in the room, only to move them back to where they’d been. He talked to Opal mostly, and when Ronan was awake he’d hear Adam’s words and explanations dotted throughout Opal’s increasingly prolific verbal onslaughts.

When the Corps issue finally came up, it had almost been a week. Ronan was still confined to quarters, so they brought the discussion to him. Ronan, barely propped on the bed, half-asleep and pretending to be involved. Adam, sitting next to him. Blue sitting on the arm of the couch, with Opal crouched in the space next to her, eagerly examining the game Henry had brought her. Henry, sensibly out of Ronan’s eyeline. Gansey, sitting on the end of the bed, Noah, in front of the door with his arms crossed like a tiny, precious bouncer, and Helen, balanced on the edge of a desk.

The soldiers were excluded. Whether or not they had been loyal to Whelk, or Kavinsky, they still worked for the Corps.

‘Stasis is cleared for use.’ Henry reported, lounging on a cleared patch of Ronan’s couch. Ronan couldn’t see him without craning his neck, which was actually an advantage.

‘It may still be ill advised.’ Gansey answered calmly. ‘From what Whelk said, there’s a ship expecting to make contact with us near Terminus. Chances are someone onboard knew his real mission.’

’So better not to fly into a trap while stuck in cryo.’ Blue observed. ‘But, even if we are awake for the next two months to avoid them, we’re still going to have to answer to someone.’

‘And we have to ditch the last two.’ Ronan pointed out.

Gansey frowned; ’Playing this wrong could put us on the run for the rest of our lives. We need to meet them head on. With a plan, and an explanation.’

‘The problem isn’t the explanation.’ Parrish interjected. ‘It’s restricted knowledge. And we can’t get away with lying unless the soldiers support the story.’

‘You think we should lie?’

There was a moment’s hesitation that seemed to reflect more general surprise at Gansey’s naivety than Adam’s bluntness.

‘That all seven - sorry, eight - of us know that an entire settlement, and almost an entire Corps squad was wiped out by a Corps bio-weapon?’ Parrish kept his tone passive. ‘One which they seemed desperate to re-acquire, despite shortcomings?’

Gansey considered this for a few long minutes, and Helen spoke; ‘Corporal Skovron’s fit for cryo. Ronan’s probably close. I’d like to ensure Opal would be safe, but otherwise I see no problems operationally with using stasis until we encounter the Corps ship.’

‘It puts us at a disadvantage.’ Ronan mumbled. ‘We’ll be disoriented and they’ll be expecting to catch us by surprise.’

‘They’ll be expecting a full, victorious ship. And a prize.’ Gansey argued. ‘And we have neither. That will surprise _them_.’

‘I can operate the ship while everyone is in stasis.’ Noah offered, his smooth, repaired face tipping like a bird’s. ‘I can wake you when we encounter another ship or we reach our destination.’

‘I’d rather stay awake.’ Ronan replied, more pensively than he intended. ‘I’m not going to heal in cryo.’

If the Corps attacked them, they’d need at least one functional gunner, and Ronan was overtly conscious that he was currently unfit for duty. More than that, he couldn’t face the idea of lying down in a pod, if he suspected it wouldn’t be the last thing he did.

‘I would too.’ Adam said softly.

Gansey glanced at them, distracted, but before he could speak Blue had circled back to a previous comment.

‘If we did lie, what would we say? “Sorry all your people died, but we have no idea what did it?”’

‘Why not?’ Adam shrugged. ‘That was what Whelk expected us to say. A random incursion from native aliens. Not an intergalactic problem at all.’

‘On a distant, unlawful settlement colony.’ Henry added. ‘People hardly care about things going wrong with them.’

‘The soldiers.’ Adam repeated firmly. ‘Skov, possibly, but Rutherford seems loyal. They wouldn’t hide the truth from the Corps for something they have no stake in.’

Gansey turned this thought over, brow furrowed. ‘What if they have a stake?’

‘They weren’t supposed to know either.’ Helen said. ‘Which means they could be in just as much trouble as we are.’

‘Or they could pretend to be Whelk’s minions.’ Ronan reminded her. ‘And fuck us over.’

Someone said; ‘ _Ronan_ -’ in a half-hearted attempt to admonish him.

‘I’ll talk to them.’ Gansey suggested. ‘See where they stand. As things are, we probably need to brace for the worst. I’m recommending stasis for our guests, and for us, too, if it seems safe enough with Noah keeping an eye out. In the meantime, Blue and I will be mapping routes to uninhabited planets beyond Terminus, and in other border zones. We might be able to evade them by dispersing through the inner galaxies, but if we want to stay together, long-term isolation may be our only option.’

They talked about it, for a while longer. Laughing at the suggestion that Gansey could grow a beard, or that Henry would have to relieve himself in the wilderness. Blue would be fine, she argued, because she’d grown up a scavenger. Adam looked mild, he’d grown up starving.

Gansey’s suggestion that they split up was mere rhetoric. Possibly Helen, with her status and her unrecorded presence on the crew, could escape the search, return home. But the rest of them were bound to each other, and if the Corps pursued them, bound for an unknown planet.

 

 

 

Adam stayed, after the others had left. Helen had checked Ronan’s temperature, and his bandages, and administered a decreased dose of painkillers.

It was the only reason he was still awake, barely, when Adam took off his coveralls and climbed onto the bed.

‘You don’t have to stay.’ He said sluggishly, when Adam had made himself comfortable. ‘Y’know.’

‘Out of stasis?’ Adam voice was crystal clear, unlike his own. ‘Neither do you.’

‘I want to.’ Ronan tried, and failed, to shrug nonchalantly.

‘Then I’ll be here.’

It took Ronan an effort not to grin like an idiot.

‘Ready to settle down, Parrish?’ He asked instead, letting his eyes drift shut.

Adam smiled. Ronan could hear it in his voice. ‘Is that an offer, Lynch?’

‘Course. Front row seats to Gansey and Cheng trying to be ordinary.’ He attempted to raise a beguiling eyebrow.

‘Perfect.’ Adam answered.

‘We’ll build you a laboratory.’ Ronan promised airily.

‘Mm. And a place for all your junk.’

’S’not junk.’ Eyes closed, Ronan found the back of Adam’s shirt and laid a hand on his spine. He was lying on his stomach, head tipped into the pillow, breath on Ronan's skin. ‘That all you want?’

‘No.’

He sounded certain, but Ronan didn’t have the energy to open his eyes, even in curiosity.

‘What?’

‘Fruit trees.’ Adam said, with conviction. ‘You remember - the ones you showed me.’

Ronan turned his head to stare at him across the pillows. ‘Fruit trees.’

Adam smiled, nodded. ‘Can you do that?’

‘For you? Anything.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone up for space!orchard hijinks? Yes. Me. Good call.
> 
> It has occurred to me that this ending is very bad for reasons and I will need to fix that at some point and write an extended bit that isn’t so stupid.


End file.
